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THE GREAT MODERN MIRACLE.— Pa^/e 245. 



THE 



crisis: 



OR, THE 



ENEMIES OF AMERICA 



UNMASKED. 



BY J. WAYNE LAURENS. 



--4 ■» o » »■ 




PHILADELPHIA: 

G. D. MlLLIin.-rUBLrSIIER: 

1855. 



4-< 



Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 

. G. D. MILLER. 

in the Clerk's OfHce of the District Court of the United States in 
and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



Printed by T. K. & P. G. Collins. 



213 



vx 






PREFACE. 

The most remarkable of all the circumstances, 
which distinguish our own country from others, 
is its rapid growth. In the begining of the seven- 
teenth century it was a wilderness, inhabited only 
by savages and wild beasts. In the middle of 
the nineteenth, it rivals the oldest and proudest 
nations of the world in population, wealth, intel- 
ligence and industry. When the territory of the 
United States was first trodden by the settlers 
of Virginia, England, France and Germany could 
boast centuries upon centuries of cultivation, 
with some little knowledge of civil and religious 
freedom. Since that period America has shown 
the birth, childhood, youth and manhood of a 
model republic, which Europe has repeatedly 
but vainly endeavored to copy. 

All this implies rapid progress. Our country 

(iii) 



IV PREFACE. 

has been aptly called the " country of progress." 
It is also^ as a necessary consequence, the theatre 
of sudden changes. Hence many enactments which 
were politic and just in the infancy of the republic^ 
are pernicious and unjust at the present time. 
Among these are the lawS;, totally different from 
those of any other civilized nation, which give to 
foreigners, after a very short residence, the rights 
of citizenship. 

When the country was just redeemed from the 
Revolution, such laws seemed politic and were com- 
paratively harmless. Now they are portentous and 
dangerous. They are rapidly filling the country 
with powerful and unscrupulous enemies to her 
prosperity and her excellent institutions, on which 
that prosperity is founded. 

These enemies, not content to enjoy peace 
security and equal rights of citizenship, under 
our constitution and laws, are boldly conspiring 
to subvert our most revered institutions, to change 
our laws, to destroy our liberties and to bring 
the whole country into a state of civil, as they 
already have, of financial dependance on foreign 
countries. These enemies are spread over the 
whole land, but they abound chiefly in cities. 



1 



PREFACE. V 

There they can most conveniently plot mischief 
and set its elements in motion. There they can 
more readily communicate with the foreign powers^ 
which they represent. There they can more 
easily accumulate the military force and the 
arms which may hereafter be required for their 
purposes. Hence it is in cities that the new 
importations of foreign enemies to the republic 
choose for the most part to reside. What are 
their real character and their secret designs, we 
have endeavored in the following pages to show ; 
as well as to indicate the means by which their 
increase may be prevented ; and the unholy 
designs, which they entertain, defeated. 

It will be perceived that the enemies of whose 
existence and power, we have endeavored in this 
volume to warn our readers, are not merely those 
w^ho reside among us. On the contrary the rami- 
fications of the grand conspiracy against Ameri- 
can liberty and happiness, are spread over many 
nations and countries. The money, the agents, 
the spies, of those who are secretly endeavoring 
to subvert our institutions are here in our midst. 
How they pursue their designs and how those 
designs may be defeated, we have endeavored to 

show in the following pages. 

1^- 



VI PREFACE. 

Of the great importance and interest of the 
subject of which we have treated there can be 
but one opinion among Americans. With respect « 
to the manner^ in which we have treated it, our 
readers will judge for themselves. 



I 



CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page. 
I. Jesuit iNFLrENCE, ---- 11. 

II. Foreign Influence in Politics, 29. 

III. Foreign Influence in Municipal Affairs. — 

Design of the Monarchs of Europe, - - - 44. 

IV. Foreign Influence in Millitart Affairs. — 

Foreign Legions among us, 50. 

V. Foreign Influence in Financial Affairs, - - - 62. 
VI. Foreign Imposture in Commerce, ------ 68. 

VII. Foreign Imposture in Commerce, (Continued) - - 78. 
VIII. What Foreign Imposture in Commerce has 

DONE FOR India, - 101. 

IX. What Foreign Imposture in Commerce has 

DONE FOR THIS CoUNTRY, ------- 124. 

X. What Foreign Imposture in Commerce has 

DONE FOR THIS COUNTRY, (Continued) - - 132. 

(7) 



I 



8 CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page. 

XI. What Foreign Impost cke in CommePvCe, has 

DONE FOPw THIS COUNTRY, (Continued) - - 143. 
XII. What Foreign Imposture in Commerce, has 

DONE FOR this COUNTRY, (Continued) - - 154. 

XIII. Examples of the present effects of foreign 

Imposture, on American Industry, - - - 163. 

XIV. The Foreigners' Remedy for Hard Times, - - 180. 
XV. The American Remedy for Hard Times, - - - 209. 

XVI. How Women may assist in applying the 

Remedy, 223. 

XVII. What would be the effect of the American 

Remedy, 233. 

XVIII. Foreign Influence in Education and 

Religion, 240. 

XIX. Aggressions of the Roman Catholics, - - - - 253. 

XX, How Jesuits operate in American politics. - - 263. 

XXI. How the Roman Catholic Church treats 

Men of Science, -------- - 271. 

XXII. How the Church of Rome rewards vice and 

immorality. — A Pattern Cardinal. - - - 283. 

XXIII. How Roman Catholic Priests interfere in 

American Politics, 290. 

XXIV. General Considerations, 298. 



THE 



ENEMIES OE AMERICA UNMASKED. 



CHAPTER I. 

JESUIT INFLUENCE. 



An American gentleman was passenger on board a 
merchant ship, bound from London to Rio Janeiro. 
There were among the passengers Englishmen, Ger- 
mans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese ; but 
the person we refer to was the only American. Be- 
tween himself and the English gentlemen, there were 
frequent discussions about politics, to which such of 
the other passengers, as could speak English, would 
listen, sometimes taking a part. Of course, our Ame- 
rican was a great friend to the institutions of his own 
country ; and defended republican forms of govern- 

(9) 



10 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

men, freedom of the speecli and of the press, the vote 
by ballot, and all the other elements of popular sove- 
reignty through thick and thin. Assailed on every 
side, he found his office of champion of freedom no 
sinecure. Every calm morning and every pleasant 
evening witnessed a new controversy on the deck or 
in the cabin ; but he manfully held his ground against 
a host of adversaries; and being fluent in speech, 
strong in argument, skilled in logic, and full of lively 
and sarcastic humor, he generally came out of the 
debate with honor, taking care always to terminate the 
action at precisely the right moment, and to quit the 
field with flying colors. 

Among the persons who listened with the greatest 
attention to these debates, was a lean bilious looking 
old Frenchman, who always took care to be present, 
and who showed by his look and manner, that he was 
deeply interested in politics, although he never by any 
.chance uttered an opinion or made a remark on poli- 
tical subjects, in the general circle of the passengers. 

In point of fact, this man was a Roman Catholic 
priest, a Jesuit of high standing, who was going to 
some station in South America, in obedience to an 
order from his superior. He was a cosmopolite indeed. 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 11 

Though not much past the middle point of life, he was 
rather aged in appearance, in consequence of the great 
variety and extent of the missions which he had per- 
formed in all quarters of the world, and in every kind 
of climate. From Canada to Calcutta; from the 
breezy heights of the Andes to the unwholesome 
marshes of Java, by sea and by land, in season and 
out of season, this man had journeyed on the secret 
errands of his order. Speaking fluently a dozen dif- 
ferent languages, and possessing the most perfect 
power of dissimulation, as well as the most thorough 
devotedness to the church, and those carefully trained 
habits of obedience, which are so essential to the 
character of an able and faithful Jesuit, he had at 
length become one of the most accomplished men of 
his age. 

As he listened to the conversation of the American 
passenger, he could not help noticing, that he was 
gradually making converts to republican views. Many 
of these passengers, he observed, sought private inter- 
views with the American; and by careful eaves- 
dropping, he ascertained that their object was to ask 
questions about his country, and gain information re 
specting the actual working of the American attempt 



12 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

at self-government. When the passage was nearly over, 
the Frenchman happening to be alone with the Ame- 
rican, in a retired part of the deck, where their con- 
versation could not be overheard, commenced a quiet 
chat with him. Addressing him in English, which 
he spoke with ease and precision, he thanked him 
with apparent cordiality, for the entertainment he had 
derived from his conversation or rather eloquent ha- 
ranguing to the other passengers, during the voyage. 
He professed to have enjoyed their debates very 
greatly ; and gave the American due credit for his wit, 
his logic, his humour, his address, and his unbounded 
good nature. 

The American was much pleased at his compliments ; 
for he had conceived a great respect for this silent and 
attentive auditor ; and, in fact, had, in his own secret 
mind, set him down as a hopeful convert to Ameri- 
canism ; he thanked him, therefore, with much feeling, 
for his good opinion ; at the same time disclaiming 
any merit, for success in defending a truth so self- 
evident, as that which is expressed in these few words — 
that a nation ought to govern itself, and that by the 
popular vote of its own citizens. 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 13 

^^Thls/' said the Jesuit, with a quiet smile, "you 
suppose to be the system of your own country?" 

"I do not suppose it," said the American, "I 
hnow it." 

"Now," said the Jesuit, "listen to me a few mo- 
ments and I will tell you what I know. Your presi- 
dent is elected by the conclave of cardinals at Rome, 
the same who elect the pope. Your people nominate 
the candidates. Our confidential agents select from 
the number, the one whom they believe to be the 
most favorable to the interests of the church. His 
name with those of the other candidates is reported 
to the cardinals and the pope. When their decision 
is announced to the confidential friends of the pope 
and the cardinals, in the United States, they send 
forth their orders through the priests ; and the whole 
Eoman Catholic vote is thrown for the candidate who 
is favoured by the church. He, of course, is always 
elected. Your parties are so equally divided on poli- 
tics, that this Roman Catholic vote, which is cast on 
purely religious considerations, is always sufficient to 
turn the scale." 

The American looked rather blank at this announce- 
ment. He was quite taken aback. Especially was 

2 



14 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

he staggered by the recollection that the candidate 
for the presidency, who was sustained by the Irish and 
German votes, was generally successful. He courte- 
ously thanked the Jesuit for the valuable information 
which he had communicated : and during the short 
remainder of the voyage, he abstained from talking 
politics and gave himself up to reflection. 

Let us also reflect a little on the Jesuit's story. Per- 
haps it was a hoax, or a mere idle brag, intended to 
annoy and mortify the American. 

But is not the main point of his declaration true ? 
Is it not true that in many very essential points this 
country is governed by foreign influence ? Is it not 
even highly probable that Roman Catholic prelates 
have a voice in the selection of candidates for very 
high as well as low offices, even for that of the presi- 
dent himself. Was not Mr. Polk, a man of no mark 
as a statesman and comparatively unknown to the 
country, elected in opposition to Henry Clay, immea- 
surably the most able and popular man in the United 
States ; and was not this accomplished by the Roman 
Catholics voting against him en masse, because he was 
suspected, and only suspected of favouring the native 
American movement ? 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 15 

Was not the present postmaster general, a man 
without ability or antecedents, appointed to his im- 
portant office in consequence of pledges given to Eo- 
man Catholic leaders ; and has he not appointed 
thousands upon thousands of Roman Catholic deputy- 
post masters, and required the appointment of Roman 
Catholic clerks ? 

With such facts as these stirring us in the face, 
what reflecting American can fail to perceive that in 
this direction at least the machinery of our govern- 
ment is to a certain extent directed by the agents of 
a foreign power, the liege subjects of the Pope of 
Rome? 

The movers of this foreign political machinery in 
this country are the members of two secret societies. 
One is composed of the regular Roman Catholic 
priests, always and every where a secret society. The 
other is the Society of Jesus, as it is profanely 
called — in other words the Society of Jesuits. All 
history, past and present, gives assurance that these 
precious gentlemen are not too scrupulously pious to 
take a hand in the game of politics. 

We will give the character of the Order of Jesuits 



16 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

in the words of one of the ablest and best-informed 
historians of the present day.* 

" In the sixteenth century, the pontificate, exposed 
to new dangers more formidable than had ever before 
threatened it, was saved by a new religious order, which 
was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized 
with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the 
rescue of the papacy, they found it in extreme peril; 
but from that moment the tide of battle turned. Pro- 
testantism, which had, during the whole generation, 
carried all before it, was stopped in its progress, and 
rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the 
shores of the Baltic. Before the order had existed a 
hundred years, it had filled the whole world with me- 
morials of great things done and suffered for the faith. 

" No religious community could produce a list of 
men so variously distinguished ; none had extended 
its operations over so vast a space ; yet in none had 
there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. 
There was no region of the globe, no walk of specula- 
tive or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be 
found. They guided the councils of kings. They 
deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the 
* Macauley. 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 17 

motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole 
libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on 
optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, 
catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of 
youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was 
conducted by them with great ability. They seemed 
to have discovered the precise point in which intellec- 
tual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual 
emancipation. Enmity itself was compelled to own 
that, in the art of managing and forming the tender 
mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assidu- 
ously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the 
pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater 
success they applied themselves to the ministry of the 
confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets 
of every government and almost every family of note 
were in their keeping. They glided from one Protes- 
tant country to another under innumerable disguises, 
as gay cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. 
They wandered to countries which neither mercantile 
avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any 
stranger to explore. They were to be found in the 
garb of Mandarins, superintending the Observatory 

at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, 

2^ 



18 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages 
of Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence, 
whatever might be their employment, their spirit was 
the same, entire devotion to the common cause, im- 
plicit obedience to the central authority. 

" None of them had chosen his dwelling-place, or his 
avocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live 
under the Arctic circle or the equator, whether he 
should pass his life in arranging gems and collating 
manuscripts at the Vatican, or in persuading naked 
barbarians in the southern hemisphere not to eat each 
other, were matters which he left with profound sub- 
mission to the decision of others. If he was wanted 
at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If 
he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling through the 
desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was 
needed in some country where his life was more inse- 
cure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to har- 
bor him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, 
fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to 
expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to 
his doom. 

" But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, 
and self-devotion which were characteristics of the 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 19 

society, great vices were mingled. It was alleged, and 
not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit 
which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his 
liberty, and of his life, made him also regardless of 
truth and of mercy ; that no means which could pro- 
mote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlaw- 
ful, and that by the interest of his religion he too often 
meant the interest of his society. It was alleged that 
in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his 
agency could be distinctly traced ; that, constant only 
in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, 
he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy 
of freedom, and in others the most dangerous enemy 
of order. The mighty victories which he boasted that 
he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in 
the judgment of many illustrious members of that 
Church, rather apparent than real. He had, indeed, 
labored with a wonderful show of success to reduce 
the world under her laws, but he had done so by relax- 
ing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead 
of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard 
fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered 
the standard till it was beneath the average level of 
human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts 



20 THE ENEMIES OF AMEKICA UNMASKED. 

-who had been baptized in the remote regions of the 
East ; but it was reported that from some of these 
converts the facts on which the whole of the theology 
of the gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, 
and that others were permitted to avoid persecution 
by bowing down before the images of false gods, while 
internally repeating Paters and Aves. Nor was it 
only in heathen countries that such arts were said to 
be practised. It was not strange that people of all 
ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded to 
the confessionals in the Jesuit temples, for from those 
confessionals none went discontented away. There 
the priest was all things to all men. He showed just 
so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at 
his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Francis- 
can Church. 

"If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he 
spoke in the saintly tone of the primitive fathers ; but 
with that very large part of mankind who have reli- 
gion enough to make them uneasy when they do 
wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from do- 
ing wrong, he followed a very different system. Since 
he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his busi- 
ness to save them from remorse. He had at his com- 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 21 

mand an immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded 
consciences. In the books of casuistry \Yhich had been 
written by his brethren, and printed with the appro- 
bation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines con- 
solatory to transgressors of every class. There the 
bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete 
his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught 
how he might, without sin, run off with his master's 
plate. The pander was assured that a Christian man 
might easily earn his living by carrying letters and 
messages between married women and their gallants. 
The high-spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France 
were gratified by a decision in favour of duelling. The 
Italians, accustomed to darker and baser modes of 
vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, with- 
out any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind 
hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to de- 
stroy the whole value of human contracts and of hu- 
man testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold 
together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it 
was because common sense and common humanity re- 
strained men from doing what the Society of Jesus 
assured them that they might with a safe conscience 
do. So strangely were good and evil intermixed in 



22 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

the character of the celebrated brethren; and the 
intermixture was the secret of their gigantic power." 

Such is the character of the Jesuits drawn by an 
impartial hand. Such is the secret society organized 
and in full activity in these United States. Such is 
the force of foreign trained bands engaged in the work 
of establishing Jesuit ascendancy in this country, as 
firmly as it is abeady established in many countries 
in Europe. 

How shall their designs be resisted and defeated ? 
"We answer, by Hawk Eye's method of stopping a con- 
flagration on the prairie — namely — by " making fire 
fight fire." ^Ye must oppose to them, an order of 
free Americans, well organized, numerous ; extending 
through the whole country, acting under one impulse, 
and fixed in one resolve — that Americans shall rule 
America. 

It is in vain that we oppose to the machinations of 
of a secret and widely diffused order, the proceedings 
of open political assemblies, who publish all their pro- 
ceedings and all their intentions in the newspapers. 
Politics may well be compared to war in the matter 
of strategy. If your enemy knows your intentions, 
you are in perpetual danger of defeat. If you aban- 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 23 

don the power of secret action, you abandon, at the 
same moment, all chance of success. If you would 
save the institutions of your country from the sacrile- 
gious hands of Jesuit priests, you must "make fire 
fight fire." You must retain the power of sometimes 
taking your deadly enemy by surprise. 

What some of the designs of the Jesuits are with 
respect to this country is fortunately known by their 
acts and the declarations of the journals under their 
control. To eradicate the whole system of public in- 
struction as at present organized ; to control the elec- 
tions, by using the Roman Catholic votes " to turn the 
scale;'' and to make the whole country a Roman Ca- 
tholic country, in which free thought, and free speech 
are crimes punishable with imprisonment and death, 
may seem to some very bold designs to entertain with 
respect to this country. But these designs are by no 
means too daring for Jesuit priests, as their public de- 
clarations show. To defeat them we must begin now, 
before they have advanced further ; and we must oppose 
them vigorously, sincerely, and, above all, systemati- 
eally. 

As a commentary on the readiness with which the 
Jesuits change their professions to suit emergencies. 



24 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

now, as well as formerly, we quote the following curi- 
ous transaction of the year 1854. 

THE KING OF NAPLES AND THE JESUITS. 

TuriUy Bee, 6. — A curious quarrel has lately broken 
out between the Neapolitan government and the Jesuits 
of that kingdom. It appears that the latter had been 
in the habit of teaching that the Pope was superior to 
all the other sovereigns of the earth, and the former 
has, for some unexplained reason, quite recently 
thought proper to regard this not very novel doctrine 
among Eoman Catholics, as highly revolutionary. The 
consequence was, that M. Mazza, the Director of Po- 
lice, sent for Padre Giuseppe, the chief of the Jesuits, 
the other day, and told him they must discontinue this 
practice, and should recollect that in 1848 they were 
sent out of the country in carriages ; " but if these 
things continue," said the worthy minister, " the gov- 
ernment will kick you out of the kingdom." " Noi vi 
cacceremo a cale^' were the precise words. The reve- 
rend father, much distressed at the result of this inter- 
view, hastened back to his convent ; and lost no time 
in compiling the following protest, which was published 
at Naples a day or two after — 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 25 

To his Royal Majesty Ferdinand 11,^ of the Kingdom 

of the Two Sicilies. 
Sacred Eoyal Majesty — 

Sire — With much surprise we have heard our sen- 
timents doubted regarding absolute monarchy; we, 
therefore, think it necessary humbly to submit our 
views in the present page. 

Majesty, we not only in olden time, but also recently, 
on our re-establishment in 1821, until the present day, 
have always inculcated respect, love, and devotion for 
the King our Lord, for his Government, for the form 
of the same — that is, absolute monarchy. 

This we have done, not only from conviction, but 
also because the doctors of the company, who are 
Francesco Suarez, the Cardinal Ballarmine, and many 
other theologians and publicists of the same, have pub- 
licly taught absolute monarchy to be the best form of 
government 

This we have done, because the internal economy 
of the company is monarchical, and therefore we are 
by maxim and by education devoted to absolute mo- 
narchy, in which Catholicism, by the wisdom and zeal 
of a pious King, can alone have secure defence and 
prosperity. 

3 



26 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Majesty, that we both think, and believe, and sus- 
tain that absolute monarchy is the best of governments, 
is demonstrated by the damage we sustained in the 
year 1848. We were the victims of Liberalism, 
because all Liberals were and are well persuaded 
also, that the Jesuits are the supporters of absolute 
monarchy. 

These things, oh, Majesty ! are well known, and. 
Liberals would more easily believe that the sun would 
not rise to-morrow, than admit that the Jesuits could 
favor them ; and therefore every time they attempt a 
revolution, their first object is to despoil the Jesuits. 

For this reason the Liberals, by an inviolable canon 
of their law, will not admit a Jesuit, or one who is 
affiliated to the order, among them. 

In fact, the Jesuits in the Kingdom of Naples have 
always taught it to be unpardonable to make revolu- 
tions for the purpose of changing the absolute monarchy, 
which the reigning dynasty has always maintained. 

If this should not be sufficient not to be thought 
Liberals, we humbly pray your Majesty to point out 
what further we ought to do to be believed decided 
absolutists. 

Certainly the Jesuits have never been, at any time, 



JESUIT INFLUENCE. 27 

or in any place, accused of Liberalism ; and what motive 
should they have for not loving and defending the 
absolute government of the august monarch Ferdinand 
II., who has covered them with benefits ? 

Finally, Majesty, of this sovereign beneficence we 
have made no other use than for the good of Christian 
morality and Catholicity, and the reigning dynasty, 
to profess immutable fidelity to the absolute monarchy, 
to which we declare ourselves always devoted, and we 
hope your Majesty w^ill graciously permit us to con- 
firm this sentiment at your Majesty's feet by word of 
mouth. 

The present page is signed by me, by my "Fathers 
councillors" (Padri Consultori,) and all others present, 
in the short time there has been for collecting their 
signatures ; and if your majesty desires the signatures 
of all the Jesuits of this province of Naples, they can 
be speedily obtained. In so much, we who sign this 
are a full guarantee for their devotion by all proof to 
the absolute monarchy. 

Giuseppe Maria Paladini, 
della Compagnia di Gesu Provinciale, 
(and 23 others.) 

Collegio del Cfesii Nuovo JVapoU, Nov, 21. 



28 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

It -would be curious and instructive, says a cotem- 
porary, to discover what are the convictions, the doc- 
trines, and the teachings of the numerous Jesuit schools 
in our own country ; to what extent they instill poison 
into the minds of American youth ; and whether they 
contradict the profession of faith of their European 
and Neapolitan brethren. What say the Roman Ca- 
tholic clergy in the United States to the above truly 
Jesuitical petition ? Can we hope that they will con- 
tradict or condemn these principles, so expressed ? Do 
they agree with the Fathers, or have they been favored 
with some new and contradictory light ? 



CHAPTER 11. 

FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 

Mr. Scroggs, who is staying at one of our crack 
hotels J brought letters to us from our correspondent 
in Manchester. He is a very nice person in his way. 
He has an air of wxll fed respectability about him, 
which betokens thrift in trade and good quarters. His 
face is rosy, rubicand, and well filled out. His figure 
is rotund and dignified. He gives you good port and 
champagne when you dine with him, and does it with 
an air of authoritative patronage, which, to an Ame- 
rican citizen is very edifying. It is true he speaks of 
'' am and heggs" for breakfast ; but that is the fault 
of his education and profession ; for Scroggs, although 
his English guineas, and a large stock of assurance 

3* (29) 



30 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

have gained him admission into what is called good 
society, as a gentleman, in this country, he is nothing 
but a bagman, when he is at home. 

Scroggs's thorough ignorance of all liberal know- 
ledge, his John Bull prejudices, and his admirable 
self-conceit render him an entertaining subject. So 
we sometimes amuse ourself by putting questions to 
him and receiving very profound answers. 

Yesterday, at the dinner-table, he was advocating 
the claims of one of his countrymen to some petty 
office in the custom-house. 

'' Pray, Scroggs," said we, " what American citizen 
was ever permitted to hold office in England ?" 

''I ave card say," said Scroggs, ''that Lord Lynd- 
hurst, the chancellor, was born in Boston/' 

" True,'' we replied, "but he was not an American 
citizen. He was born a British subject ; and his 
father, an old tory, took him over to England before 
the Revolution. What other American holds office in 
England?" 

''I never card of hany bother," said Scroggs. 

"Well, in what other country of Europe are Ame- 
ricans permitted to hold office and exercise political 
power ? Where can they vote in an election of any 




MK. SCROGGS.- Page 30. 



1 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 31 

kind ? Not in France, where even your Lord Brougliam 
found it impossible to become a citizen. Not in Aus- 
tria, wbere Americans are imprisoned on suspicion of 
entertaining heretical opinions in politics. Not in 
Germany, Switzerland, Italy, or Spain. In Eussia 
and Turkey, some ingenious and talented persons from 
this country have received situations of a semi-official 
character, on account of some special knowledge, and 
in cases where their services could not well be dispensed 
with. But in despotic countries, like Russia and Tur- 
key, all under the sovereign are necessarily slaves, in 
the political sense of the word. No offices exist in 
those countries which are of so independent a character, 
even, as that which your friend solicits in our custom- 
house. The fact is, Scroggs, that in this instance, as 
well as in all others, where we Americans deal with 
Europe and European interests, the reciprocity is all 
on one side." 

" I thought,'' said Scroggs, " that it was a game of 
give and take." 

'' Precisely so," we replied, *^'only the giving is all 
on our side, and the taking all on yours. When En- 
glishmen, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, and Spa- 
niards, Portuguese, and Italians ask for offices here, 



32 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

we give them. But if an American could by any pos- 
sibility make such an ass of himself as to ask for an 
office any where in Europe, and especially in England, 
Scotland, or Ireland, he would be laughed at, and 
scouted for his unparalleled impudence and presump- 
tion. ' Give office to a foreigner, and above all to an 
American,' a turtle-fed alderman of London would ex- 
claim, Hhe thing is preposterous.' And yet the per- 
sons holding office in the United States, at this moment, 
who were born in Great Britain or Ireland, are counted 
by thousands. I tell you, Scroggs, the reciprocity is 
all on one side." 

''But then they become citizens," pleaded Scroggs. 

'' But that don't make them Americans, by a long 
shot," we answered; ''there ought to be equal privi- 
leges on both sides. While an American is utterly 
shut out and debarred from holding office in Europe, 
Europeans should be dealt with in the same manner 
here. It is not fair to play at give and take, with the 
giving all on our side and the taking all on yours." 

Here Scrogg's attention was called off by some one 
who wished to look at his pattern-books of British 
calicoes made in imitation of American ones, and in- 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 33 

tended to cut out the fabrics of Lowell, in the Ameri- 
can market ; and so our conference ended. 

But, leaving Scroggs to his pattern-books and his 
customers, let us consider for a few moments the pro- 
priety of defending ourselves from the immense foreign 
influence which is aiming to control, and even to a 
certain extent is at this moment actually controlling 
the destinies of the country. 

Is it not a fact that, for the last twenty-five years, 
candidates for office have been constantly and openly 
bidding for the foreign vote? Even at the last elec- 
tion, did we not have to witness the humiliating spec- 
tacle of a man rendered illustrious by his public ser- 
vices, stumping about the country and currying favor 
with Irishmen and Germans, and endeavoring to gain 
the suflrages, which had already been sold by the Jes- 
uits to his opponent, to be subsequently paid for by 
post office appointments? Do not foreign ruffians 
bully and attack with force and arms American born 
citizens at the polls, at every election ? Are not these 
services to political aspirants paid for by appointments 
in custom houses and post offices ? What would be 
thought of an American opening his mouth to speak, 
much less doubling his fist to strike, at an election in 



84 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

England, Scotland, or Ireland ? He would be immo- 
lated on the spot ; and the coroner's verdict would be 
"sarved Mm right.'' The truth is that nations ought 
to govern themselves, without foreign influence being 
permitted for one moment to interfere. 

Many of our leading statesmen have recently de- 
clared that no foreigner should be naturalized till he 
has resided in this country twenty-one years. We 
might cite some very high political authorities on this 
point. But we care for no man's authority in so plain 
a case. The thing is self-evident. Americans should 
rule America ; and the voters are really the rulers. 
None but a native born American would ever have 
been allowed to vote, if justice had been done, from 
the beginning. The franchise should have been held 
sacred. But the laws of the land should be respected. 
Let those vote, whose vote is already legalized. But 
when we come to revise the naturalization laws, a piece 
of public service which will soon have to be performed, 
let us make thorough work of it, and in future grant 
the privilege of voting to no man who was not born on 
the American soil. We have had enough of artificial 
naturalizing. In all future time, let nature do the 
naturalizing herself. Then there will be no mistake, 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 35 

and no false swearing. Foreigners will cease to per- 
jure themselves in order to acquire the privilege of 
fighting at the polls, and the interests of peace and 
good morals will be promoted. 

But we have a great deal of work to perform in the 
mean time. It is necessary to put an end at once and 
for ever to the degrading practice of candidates for 
office bidding for the foreign vote. Let every native 
born American do his duty to his country and himself; 
and the foreign vote will no longer be worth bidding 
for. Let no American born citizen vote for a foreigner 
or for a man who will appoint foreigners to office, and 
the thing is done. We shall thus rid ourselves of the 
greatest evil with which this country was ever cursed. 

There has been a great deal of talk about liberality 
towards foreign nations. But what foreign nation has 
ever shown any liberality towards us ? "Why should we 
import voters, when we are permitted to export none ? 
They want a free trade in voters corresponding with 
their free trade in other things, giving to them all the 
advantage and to us none whatever. That is the Eu- 
ropean theory of free trade with the United States. 

We are often reminded of the great military ser- 
vices of foreigners in our armies in former times, and 



36 THE ENEMIES OE AMERICA UNMASKED. 

we are charged with ingratitude in wishing to withhold 
the franchise from those who have defended the soil. 
But, with some brilliant exceptions, such as La Fay- 
ette, for example, these were mercenary soldiers, 
who, if they received their pay, received all which 
they bargained for, and have no right to demand 
any more. Will the foreign legion whom the British 
government are now about to hire to fight against the 
Russians, ever become British subjects and voters? 
The British understand their duty and their interests 
too well to permit any such exercise of gratitude. It 
is only Americans who are expected to reward foreign 
hired soldiers, by making them citizens and voters. 

To become an American citizen and a voter, a man 
should have been born and educated among us. He 
should be an American indeed. He will then have 
some chance of understanding the nature of our insti- 
tutions, and the working of our system. He* will have 
no foreign prejudices to get rid of. He will have no 
foreign preferences to forget. He will have no foreign 
ignorance to be enlightened. 

Our present system of making American citizens is 
a perpetual source of difiiculty, vexation, and expense. 
A worthless fellow, named Koszta, comes to this coun- 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 37 

try, and declares his intention to become an American 
citizen. This he does in order to protect himself 
against molestation while carrying on political intrigues 
abroad. Returning, to carry out his original intention, 
he is seized by the Austrians, who choose to govern 
themselves in their own way, without the intervention 
of pseudo- American citizens. An American officer 
reclaims him. The two governments are embroiled. 
The American secretary of state is made to waste 
much of his valuable time in writing a long defence. 
The American congress wastes more time and squanders 
many thousand dollars of the people's money in de- 
bating about this trumpery affair — and all this because 
our naturalization laws require reforming. If these 
laws were such as they ought to be, another " Koszta 
affair' would be impossible. But as the law now stands, 
the success of this adventurer will probably be the 
prelude to many more of the same sort. The present 
naturalization laws place our government entirely at 
the mercy of any foreign adventurer who chooses to 
make them the instrument for embroiling the country 
with foreign powers. They should be forthwith 
reformed. 

The following able summary of the baneful effects 
4 



38 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

of foreign influence is extracted from a recent inau- 
gural address of Governor Casey, of Delaware. 

" The issue which has been so harshly forced from 
abroad upon our people, has no features in common 
with our past political controversies, the mere domestic 
contests which have recognized a generous and frater- 
nal difference of opinion among those who agree in a 
united devotion to our native land. The present is a 
resistance to invaders who unite foreign minds and 
hearts in allegiance to a foreign Prince and Pontiff, 
and standing between the American parties, have 
dictated their own terms, and asserted their own 
superiority. Under these influences, the ballot-box has 
been corrupted by their frauds, or subjected to their 
violence ; American politics have been stained with 
vices foreign to the American character ; and a large 
portion of oui- most virtuous citizens have revolted, in 
disgust, from the exercise of privileges so shared and 
so degraded ; and the highest places of the Republic 
have been abandoned to foreigners or their flatterers, 
some of whom have dared to assert the alleged prero- 
gative of a foreign Pontiff to free American citizens 
from their allegiance to the government of their coun- 
try. In our foreign policy the settled principles of 



FOREiaN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 39 

American statesmanship are well nigh lost sight of; 
foreigners have been selected to represent the country 
at the principal courts of Europe ; and in the gratifi- 
cation of feelings, unshared by our people, they have 
made the American name a reproach throughout a large 
part of the civilized world. American principles and 
policy, feeling and interests, have been merged in their 
alien opposites ; and in the press and on the platform, 
foreign influences have overswayed the control and di- 
rected the action of parties and the selection of candi- 
dates. The result of this conspiracy against the ori- 
ginal and native American liberty, substantially, 
though not nominally, is devoted to foreign interests and 
preferring persons of foreign birth. If its recognized 
advocates have as yet failed to proclaim allegiance to 
a foreign monarch, they have made in most of the 
States efforts to overthrow the American system of 
public instruction; and have sought to exclude the 
Bible from the American schools ; and have freely de- 
nounced the most cherished principles of American 
religious liberty ; and all this, it should be remembered, 
has sprung from those to whom all that our fathers 
have won and that is dear to us, was freely offered ; 
all this was foreign in its origin, authors, and acts — 



40 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

all this was unprovoked, wanton, long patiently en- 
dured ; endured till foreign demagogues claimed our 
country as their own, and made our rights and our 
safety the counters with which they played the game 
of foreign politics." 

After noticing the noble resistance of Delaware to 
this foreign influence, as evinced in the late election, 
Governor Casey thus enumerates the duties imposed 
on American citizens in relation to foreign influence : 

" That triumph, should it prove to be national, will 
impose many and majestic duties. The first will be to 
surround, as with a wall of fire, which no pollution can 
invade, that Holy of Holies, the ballot-box ; and closely 
succeeding will rise the duty of regulating immigration ; 
of closing the avenues which have communicated with 
the prisons and lazar-houses of Europe ; of defeating 
the ungenerous policy by which foreign princes force 
us to receive the moral abominations which their over- 
cloyed country vomits forth, constraining us to support 
their paupers, and to expose the property and lives of 
our people to the ruffian skill and desperation of their 
transported felons. As a tax and a peril the heaviest 
and worst ; as a wanton wrong and outrage, it should 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 41 

be redressed in the first hours of realized national 
American victory. 

"But the more pervading and vital triumph of the 
second American revolution^ will be those which will 
establish, as the settled policy foreign and domestic of 
the nation, the saving principle of American Independ- 
ence, as applied, not only to the right of suffrage, but 
to the privileges, sacred and inestimable, of our honest 
and hard-handed home labor. The policy by which 
our country has been, in its trade, its currency, its 
varied industrial pursuits, agricultural, mechanical, 
and otherwise, and in its social habits of expenditure 
and luxury, thrust into and made a part of Europe, is 
a treason against American honor and American inte- 
rests. It is a repudiation of all the peculiar advantages 
bestowed, by Providence, in requital of the virtues of 
our fathers, upon our young and then unburdened 
country. We have, to gratify the schemes of politicians, 
and to glut the greediness of money changers, invited 
and drawn upon our country a common and almost an 
equal share of the evils which attend, as their parasite 
and clinging curses, the wasting vices and crimes of 
Europe. Our true hearted independence, real happi- 
ness, and secure policy are to be realized only by fos- 



42 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

tering our own American homes — their industry, mu- 
tual relations and mutual self-reliance. In regard to 
every political virtue and hope, to all of pride and con- 
fidence associated with that American liberty which — 
as the earthquake shakes and the tempest overshadows 
all else of the civilized world — grows brighter and 
dearer to us, it is apparent that the time has arrived 
when our own country must separate her policy from 
the intrigues and machinations of Europe, from the 
strategy and corruption by which European councils 
and interests boastfully betrayed the independence of 
American industry and made our land tributary, as 
it now unhappily is, to England and France ; forced 
upon us, with their luxuries, their vices : and added 
to their usurpation the heavy imposition of a monstrous 
and perpetual debt — a debt shared by every Ameri- 
can ; a debt which drains our country of its specie, and 
which subjects it, throughout every fibre of its giant 
frame, to the agony of such a financial convulsion as 
that which afflicts us. Vain will be the patriotic throb- 
bings of the great American heart, and vain the vigor 
of the American arm to re-achieve American Inde- 
pendence, until our land shall have been made inde- 



FOREiaN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS. 43 

pendent in that from which all power has its source — 
her industry. 

'' Then and not till then, will she cease to be a Eu- 
pean colony ; then will she be the America of our fa- 
thers — truly independent — rich in her own resources — 
secure in her own strength, and happy in her own 
freedom. The crimes and oppressions, the wrongs 
and wars of Europe may terrify and torture their own 
world, but not a ripple of the storm will break upon 
our shores. Till that consummation shall have been 
effected, our duty will be unfulfilled, and our triumph — 
however glorious — incomplete, the oracles of our Ame- 
rican patriarchs and prophets will remain empty, and 
the real mission, holy, calm, and beneficent of our 
American destiny unachieved. 



CHAPTER III. 

FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN MUNICIPAL AFFAIUS — ^DESIGN 
OF THE MONARCHS OF EUROPE. 

A COTEMPORARY Writer* presents the following 
startling facts in relation to foreign influence in mu- 
nicipal affairs, and also in relation to the designs of 
European sovereigns with respect to the United States. 

"We have already adverted to the startling fact 
that of the Police force of New York, seven hundred 
and eighteen are natives of the United States, four 
hundred and seventeen born in foreign countries, and 
that thirty-nine of them had been in the State Prison. 
The American Organ^ commenting upon this, re- 
marks, ' Does any one believe that more than one- 
third of the police force of New York would have been 

•5^ In the Philadelphia Daily Sun. 

(44) 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS. 45 

composed of foreigners, if the demagogues who con- 
trol that city had not relied upon the foreign vote to 
sustain them in their corrupt practices ? It is cus- 
tomary, in this country, to regard with horror the cor- 
ruptions of European governments. But in what 
court of Europe, let us ask, does corruption walk more 
unblushingly in noon-day, than for years she has 
stalked with brazen face through the City Hall, of 
New York ? Were it not for her large foreign popu- 
lation, New York would be as well governed as Boston, 
or Charleston, or Philadelphia. Why not ? Her Ame- 
rican citizens are as honest, as virtuous, and as law- 
abiding as those of any other city. It is the foreign 
element, forming so large a portion of her population, 
which renders her a disgraceful exception to all the 
other citizens of the United States. Two years ago, 
three of her Aldermen were indicted by the grand 
jury ; and, as we write, one of her Common Council, 
an Irishman, is an inmate of the Tombs, for aiding the 
escape of the murderer of Poole — that murderer him- 
self a policeman and a foreigner !' 

" The danger of making this country a receptacle 
for the bad and disaifected population of Europe, and 
investing them with the rights of citizens has long ago, 



46 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and often been pointed out. The Duke of Eichmondj 
formerly the celebrated Colonel Lennox, was Governor 
of Canada in 1815 — 16. The late Horatio Gates, a 
native of Massachusetts, was at that time an eminent 
merchant in Montreal, and was known and respected 
by thousands in Canada and his native country. Mr. 
Gates reports the following remarks as having been 
made in his presence by the Duke of Richmond : 

" The Duke, a short time before his death, in speak- 
ing of the government of the United States, said, ' It 
was weak, inconsistent, and bad, and could not long 
exist.' 'It will be destroyed ; it ought not, and will 
not be permitted to exist, for many and great are the 
evils which originated from the existence of that gov- 
ernment. The cause of the French revolution, and 
subsequent wars and commotions in Europe are to be 
attributed to its example ; and so long as it exists, no 
prince will be safe upon his throne ; and the sovereigns 
of Europe are aware of it, and they have determined 
upon its destruction, and come to an understanding 
upon this subject, and have decided on the means to 
accomplish it ; and they will eventually succeed by 
subversion rather than conquest.' ' As the low and 
surplus population of the different nations of Europe 



DESIGN OF THE MONARCHS OF EUROPE. 47 

will be carried into that country ; it is and will be a 
receptacle for the bad and disaflfected population of 
Europe, when they are not wanted for soldiers, or to 
supply the navies, and the European governments will 
favor such a course.' ' This will create a surplus and 
majority of low population, who are so very easily ex- 
cited ; and they will bring with them their principles, 
and in nine cases out of ten, adhere to their ancient 
and former governments, laws, manners, and religion, 
and will transmit them to their posterity, and in many 
cases propogate them among the natives.' 

" ' These men will become citizens, and by the con- 
stitution and laws, will be invested with the right of 
suffrage. The different grades of society will then be 
created by the elevation of a few and by degrading 
many, and thus a heterogeneous population will then 
be formed, speaking different languages, and of diffe- 
rent religions and sentiments, and to make them act, 
think, and feel alike, in political affairs, will be like 
mixing oil and water ; hence discord, dissension, anar- 
chy, and civil war will ensue, and some popular indi- 
vidual will assume the government and restore order, 
and the sovereigns of Europe, the immigrants, and 
many of the natives will sustain him. 



48 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

^" The Church of Rome has a design upon that 
country, and it will, in time, be the established reli- 
gion, and will aid in the destruction of that republic. 
I have conversed with many of the sovereigns and 
princes of Eui'ope, and they have unanimously expressed 
these opinions relative to the government of the United 
States, and their determination to subvert it !' '' 

'^ Have not these prophetic words been verified I The 
question then arises, in the language of our Washing- 
ton cotemporary — shall this state of things continue ? 
Shall the United States remain for ever a receptacle 
for the ignorant, vicious, and disaffected population of 
Europe ? Shall Europe be permitted /or the future to 
vomit forth upon our shores annually, five hundred 
thousand paupers, criminals, and vagabonds, of every 
grade and hue, to become, after the lapse of five years, 
American citizens, American law-makers, and Ameri- 
can office-holders ? This is the question which the 
American people are now required to answer. TTe 
say noiv. Because, if the settlement of this great 
question be postponed for five or ten years longer, it 
will he too late to answer it, as it should be answered. 
If postponed for a few years, the foreign party will 
become so strong that it will be impossible to effect 



i 



DESIGN OF THE MONARCHS OF EUROPE. 49 

the reformation in our naturalization laws, so impera- 
tively required for the conservation and well-being of 
our republican institutions. No ! Delays are not only 
dangerous, they di^ve fatal! Now or never is the time 
for action. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN MILITARY AFFAIRS. FOREIGN 

LEGIONS AMONG US. 

It appears that the foreign residents in the United 
States are quietly and steadily preparing a military 
force, composed entirely of themselves, to be ready 
for action when foreigners are sufficiently numerous 
in the country to bring certain political questions to 
the final arbitrement of the sword. 

How this thing is managed in New York city, where 
foreigners are more numerous than any where else in 
the country, is apparent from the following communi- 
cation addressed by "A Citizen" to the editor of the 
New York Tribune, and inserted in that paper under 
the head, ^'Abuses in the First Division of Militia — 
City of New York." 
(50) 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN MILITARY AFFAIRS. 51 

" There are frequent applications made, and some 
have been granted, for the organization of New Com- 
panies and Regiments, and even Brigades, in the First 
Division, apparently for no other object than to create 
an additional number of officers, or to bring together, 
into separate organization, the natives of a particular 
country, when it is well known that most of the exist- 
ing corps do not possess the requisite number of men 
required by law, which declares that ^ no uniformed 
company shall consist of less than fifty non-commis- 
sioned officers and privates, nor more than one hun- 
dred.' This would admit in each regiment one thous- 
and men, exclusive of commissioned officers, the non- 
commissioned staff and musicians. It is notorious, at 
least to the respective corps, that no regiment in the 
City has ever paraded over five hundred men, and the 
largest rarely over four hundred, while at least two- 
thirds of the regiments do not parade over two hun- 
dred men. There is not a company in the City that 
has one hundred effective men on the roll, and it is 
deemed a remarkably prosperous one that has fifty, 
while the most of them parade from twenty to thirty 
each. Why, then, organize new regiments and com- 
panies, when the existing ones are deficient in numbers. 



52 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and especially why organize bodies of Irish, Germans, 
French, Swiss, &c., separately. If the natives of 
those countries, being adopted citizens, desire to enrol 
themselves in good faith as American citizen-soldiers, 
they could find plenty of vacancies in the already or- 
ganized companies of the several Regiments of the Di- 
vision. If they are aliens, they have no right to be 
members, and all such now attached should at once be 
required to leave the companies in which they are en- 
rolled. It may not be generally known, but such is 
the fact, that the officers in most of the foreign orga- 
nizations issue their military orders in a foreign lan- 
guage, as well as are compelled to explain the military 
exercise in a foreign tongue. The by-laws of most 
of these companies, now recognized by law, are printed 
in a foreign language, and an American officer, who 
has to adjudicate upon their provisions, if he is not 
familiar with the language, has to require a translated 
copy. Should this be permitted ? Should it be ne- 
cessary to the members themselves ? If they are 
American citizens, and desire to be good ones, fit to be 
enrolled, ' for the security of a free State,' they should 
at least acquire a knowledge of the language of the 
country of their adoption. If they were enrolled in 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN MILITARY AFFAIRS. 53 

companies not exclusively composed of their own coun- 
trymen, they would more readily acquire this know- 
ledge, so important for a faithful discharge of their 
duty. It is known that intelligent officers who have 
been in command of corps composed chiefly of adopted 
citizens have expressed great doubt of the propriety 
of placing these corps in prominent positions, in case 
of a riot or popular tumult. Native American citi- 
zens, while they would be inclined to submit to the 
arms of their own countrymen, would not willingly 
yield to a force composed almost exclusively of fo- 
reigners^ even though adopted citizens, especially if 
they should hear orders given to such a force in a lan- 
guage to them unknown. This is another reason why 
these separate foreign organizations should not be per- 
mitted, especially when on the banners of some is 
borne the device of their nationality, and who clothe 
themselves in the uniform of another country, in pre- 
ference to an American uniform. But this evil is even 
deeper than is stated. In these organizations, there 
are many, aye hundreds, who are not citizens even by 
adoption, that is, they have not been in the country 
long enough to become citizens. Should this violation 
of law exist ? What reliance have we upon the boasted 



54 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

bulwark of American freedom — its citizen soldiery — 
when it is organized of those who are not citizens ? 
These aliens are not responsible for these organiza- 
tions. They originate in some demagogue who wishes 
the party for some other than the ostensible object. 
The General, or superior officers, are anxious to have a 
longer tail to their show, regardless of the quality, if 
they have quantity. As an evidence of this, it is 
scarcely more than two years since, when a body of 
Irishmen, (whether citizens or not is uncertain, but it 
is believed the most of them are aliens,) desired to be 
organized into a regiment, and attached to one of the 
brigades of the First Division, and applied to several 
of the commanding officers of brigades for their appro- 
bation. Most of them declined. One of them, however, 
was about to yield, when the several Colonels of this 
officer's brigade, under their proper signatures, remon- 
strated against its admission, urging some of the 
reasons herein suggested. The remonstrance had its 
effect, and the consent was withheld. The command- 
ing officer of this brigade retired, and one of the re- 
monstrating Colonels became his successor ; and soon 
thereafter himself became an applicant for the admis- 
sion of this very body of Irishmen he was so strenuous 



FOREIGN INFLUENCFi IN MILITARY AFFAIRS. 55 

in opposing when the tail would not be of any particu- 
lar advantage to the regiment he then commanded. 
And, strange to say, the Major-General himself, who 
at a Division Board, composed of oflScers representing 
several brigades and regiments of the City, sanctioned 
l)y his own vote certain principles laid down by the 
unanimous vote of the Board against the admission of 
any new corps in the division until the existing ones 
should be filled according to law, joined in the appli- 
cation ; and this regiment is now attached to the 
Second Brigade in this City. It is right, therefore, to 
attribute the evil complained of to the anxiety of some 
of the General officers to make a great show without 
regard to law or propriety. In regard to the admis- 
sion of these corps into the service of the State, it is 
evident but little pains is taken to ascertain whether 
the persons making the applications under the laws 
are eligible to be members. By the laws of the Federal 
as well as State Government, the persons subject to 
military duty are " all able-bodied white male citizens, 
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years." 
The Commander-in-chief may organize a company 
" whenever fifty persons, subject to military duty^ shall 
associate together for the purpose." What evidence 



56 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

does the Commander-in-chief require that the fifty 
persons thus applying are subject to military duty, ^. ^., 
are citizens? After the companies are organized, 
what restraint is there on Captains and Colonels to 
prevent the admission of aliens in their corps ? It 
becomes a matter of serious inquiry, when it is believed 
that more than two-thirds of the members of the First 
Division are of foreign birth^ and a large proportion 
of that number are not even citizens. It is known, 
too, that many of our native citizens are deterred from 
joining uniform companies while the privileges are 
thus abused. This subject needs the careful conside- 
ration of the Legislature, and an inquiry into all the 
facts, that a remedy may be supplied. This could be 
accomplished by the appointment of a Commission, of 
say three citizens, with power to conduct such an in- 
vestigation as would lead to a full and faithful report.'* 
The facts here disclosed by the " Citizen,'' with a 
view to the correction of abuses, suggest very grave 
reflections to all who love their country. Comment 
seems quite unnecessary. 

Perhaps it may be as well, however, to notice, in 
this connection, the fearful rate at which foreign im- 
migration into this country is increasing. 



FOREiaN LEGIONS AMONG US. 67 

" When five years were fixed for the probationary 
period before naturalization, immigration was counted 
by units, now it comes on us by hundreds of thou- 
sands — from seven thousand a year it has increased 
to nearly five hundred thousand. Estimating our 
foreign population now at about four miilionSj it is 
increasing in the ratio of twelve and a half per cent., 
while the entire population of the United States 
between 1840 and 1850 only increased about six hun- 
dred thousand a year. From 1800 to 1810 only 
seventy thousand foreigners arrived here, and from 
1840 to 1850 there came two million one hundred and 
sixteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven ; while 
in 1810 our entire population was seven million two 
hundred and thirty nine thousand eight hundred and 
fourteen, and in 1850 it was twenty three million one 
hundred and ninety one thousand eight hundred and 
seventy six — the increased immigration being as thirty 
to one, and the increased population being a little 
more than three to one. Is it not a proper regard for 
our national safety, rather than a prescriptive policy, 
which should induce a change in our naturalization 
laws? 

" Are not the elective franchise and the ballot box in 



58 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

danger of losing their purity and fore ? Is it proper 
that foreigners should hang an American Senator in 
effigy, even though it be Stephen A Douglas ? Can 
we look unconcernedly and see the efforts of the Ger- 
man Progressive Republican Party among us to abo- 
lish the Sabbath, and spread infidel doctrines in our 
midst ? Look at the different character of the immi- 
grants now arriving from those who formerly came 
here ; once they might possess the elements of good 
citizens, now they are the outpourings of poor houses, 
penitentiaries, jails, and penal colonies. They can- 
not, even with twenty-one years' probation, know as 
much of our institutions as our young natives when 
they come of age, and assume the legal duties of 
citizens. They cannot eradicate their cradle born 
sentiments of serfdom, or understand our beautiful 
governmental system, which works with the harmoni- 
ous regularity of astronomical calculation. 

"Viewing all these dangers, who can wonder that 
many Americans advocate the total repeal of the Na- 
turalization Laws, unless some plan can be devised to 
prevent frauds. Still we would, if it were impossible 
to do any better, be very willing to try the plan pro- 
posed by Senator Adams^ [viz ; to extend the resi- 



FOREIGN LEGIONS AMONG US. 59 

dence of aliens in our country before they can be Na- 
turalized, to twenty one years,] with the express un- 
derstanding that if future immigrants attempt to evade 
it, or any perjury is practised, then total exclusion 
shall be adopted as the only means of safety. But we 
have no idea that any bill touching this question will 
find favor with the present Congress, or that the next 
will be able to frame its action so as to avoid the veto 
of President Pierce ; but the whole field of contro- 
versy should be opened up and argued — the stubble 
removed, and the harvest garnered for 1857, when 
an American Congress and an American President 
will enact and approve such laws as will protect our 
Nationality and restore to us the purity of sentiment 
and action which distinguished our country before it 
was visited by the ingushing streams of foreign crime 
and ignorance. The American Nation, we are con- 
vinced, desire the total and conditional repeal of the 
Naturalization Laws, and nothing short of this will 
content them 

" If our readers are desirous to know what political 
principles are held by our foreign residents, we give 
the following public announcement as a specimen. 

The Richmond Whig, of Virginia, says that a party 



60 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

has been organized in that State, under the title of 
the ^' German Democratic Association/' which pro- 
claims the following as among its Radical principles : 
^'1. Universal suffrage. 2. The election of all offi- 
cers by the people. 3. The abolition of the Presi- 
dency. 4. The abolition of Senates^ so that the Legis- 
latures shall consist of only one branch. 5. The 
right of the people to call their Representatives 
(cashier them) at their pleasure. 6. The right of the 
people to change the Constitution when they like. 7. 
All law suits to be conducted without expense. 8. A 
department of the Ciovernment to be set up for the pur- 
pose of protecting immigration. 9. A reduced term 
for acquiring citizenship. 

REFORM IN THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE GOVERN- 
MENT. 

" 1. Abolition of all neutrality. 2. Intervention in 
favor of every people struggling for liberty. 

REFORM IN WHAT RELATES TO RELIGION. 

" 1. A more perfect development of the principle 
of personal freedom and liberty of conscience ; con- 



FOREIGN LEGIONS AMONG US. 61 

sequently a. Abolition of laws for the observance 
of the Sabbath ; l. Abolition of prayers in Congress ; 
(?. Abolition of oath upon the Bible ; d. Repeal of all 
laws enacting a religious test before taking an office. 
2. Taxation of church property. 3. A prohibition of 
incorporations of all church property in the name of 
ecclesiastics.'' 

This is indeed madness or worse. 



CHAPTER V. 

FOREiaN INFLUENCE IN FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 

The most potent influences in the world are those 
which are secret, or at least unobserved. Caloric, 
magnetism, and electricity, pervade the whole physical 
creation, and that perpetually and actively, without 
attracting the attention of the common observer. In 
the moral and political world, it is the same. Fraud, 
bribery, and corruption are for ever at their dirty work, 
in high places as well as low, while the mass of man- 
kind pursue their daily toil, without noticing the secret 
agencies which are working out misery and distress 
for the industrial classes. 

In our own country, notwithstanding the interest 
which every man takes in politics, this is peculiarly the 
(62) 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 63 

case. It is the study of political leaders to divert the 
attention of the people from the interests of industry, 
or to lead them in the wrong direction by fraud and 
imposture. It is true that in this country every man, 
who can read at all, reads the newspapers ; but every 
man does not inquire whose pay the newspaper is in. 
We are often reminded that one of the greatest bless- 
ings a country can enjoy is a free press. But it is not 
the business of the newspapers to inform us that the 
greatest curse a country can suffer is a venal press. 
We are occasionally told that this or that newspaper 
has been bought up ; and consequently transferred its 
allegiance from one political party to another. But 
we are never infqrmed that a great leading press in a 
great commercial city has been bought by British gold, 
to advocate the cause of British industry against Ame- 
rican industry. That is one of the secret inflences at 
work in our system — one among many. It is one of 
those hidden causes, whose eJBfects are apparent enough ; 
but those are always charged to the folly and extrava- 
gance of the American people, not to the secret foreign 
influences which really produce them. 

Why are our mechanics and traders now paying 



64 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

three, four, and five per cent, a month for the use of 
money ? 

'' Because you let your wives and daughters wear 
silk gowns," says Scroggs. 

Not so, Scroggs, it is because we suffer England to 
rule our financial affairs, when, if we were the true 
Americans we ought to be, we might rule them our- 
selves. Foreign influence, and not American extrava- 
gance is the cause of our present distress. Those who 
suffer most do not permit their wives and daughters to 
wear silk gowns, but they bring the distress on them- 
selves much more certainly and effectually by voting 
for those who are under foreign influence. 

In the middle ages, the aristocracy of Europe ruled 
the people by main force. The masses were unarmed 
serfs ; the barons wore iron armor and owned all the 
land, except what was owned by the Roman Catholic 
churchy which church was in close alliance with the 
aristocracy. In the present age, the people are too 
intelligent to be ruled in this coarse fashion ; and the 
aristocracy of Europe, especially that of England, 
rules by money. Fraud and corruption have taken 
the place of force. 

As Americans we would not interfere with this sys- 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 65 

tern, if it were only applied to Europe, but most unfor- 
tunately for us, it is also applied to this country. 

London boasts herself — and truly too — the great 
commercial and financial centre of the world. To 
reach this point foreign countries have been conquered, 
cheated, bribed and corrupted to an extent which has 
no parallel in history. To make London the commer- 
cial and financial centre of the world, the British aris- 
tocracy have conquered, oppressed, and nearly ruined 
India, attacked and ravaged a portion of China, cheated 
and ruined Portugal and Turkey, and by force and fraud 
annexed and colonized other countries to such an ex- 
tent that the sun never sets upon her empire. This 
country, England has twice attempted without success 
to conquer and reduce to slavery, as she has India. 
She can never accomplish this. The age of force is 
past with her. Imbecility directs her armies and na- 
vies, as we see by the events of the present war against 
Russia. England has ceased to be a great military 
power, because her inveterate system of corruption 
has utterly demoralized her military force, by giving 
all the leading ofiices to stupid aristocrats, and refusing 
promotion to merit in the rank and file. Lord Raglan 

is their Napoleon. 

6* 



66 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

But England does not wish to conquer us. She 
only wishes to rule us by the secret influence of money. 

"- To rule you," says Scroggs, '' what nonsense ! we 
have nothing to do with your politics." 

You are mistaken, Scroggs. You have a great deal 
to do with our politics, and have always meddled 
with our political affairs, as you do with those of 
all other nations. But your ultimate object is not so 
much to direct our political career, as to cheat us out 
of our money, and this you are doing every day. You 
wish London to be always, as it is unfortunately for 
us, at present, our financial ruler. If we were true 
to ourselves we could emancipate ourselves from this 
thraldom at once. But hitherto foreign influence has 
been too strong for us, because it was secret. We 
propose to unmask it before the people, and then it 
will end. The American people can do any thing 
which they think it worth while to attempt. When 
they were only three millions strong, they beat you in 
an eight years' war, rather than submit to a trumpery 
two penny tax on tea. Much more easily will they 
beat you now, when they come to understand the true 
nature of the contest. As soon as it becomes appa- 
rent to the native born American people, that the true 



FORBiaN INFLUENCE IN FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 67 

cause of the present distress of the country and the 
utter prostration of its industrial interests, is foreign 
influence, they will set the matter right. When it is 
understood that the American workmen cannot get 
work, because the interests of British workmen, or ra- 
ther the interests of the aristocracy, who make British 
workmen their slaves, are chiefly consulted by the law 
makers of this country, then new laws will be made, a 
new system — the American system — will prevail. You, 
Scroggs, will have to pack up your trumpery pattern- 
books and go back to Manchester ; we shall manufac- 
ture our own cloth, hardware, and iron rails ; business 
will revive ; London will cease to be our financial 
ruler ; and money will cease to be three per cent, a 
month. We shall then have beaten England for the 
third time and it is to be hoped we shall get rid of her 
infernal influence for ever. 

All this you say, Scroggs, is mere declamation. 

Granted. So it is — mere declamation. We like to 
declaim sometimes. All Americans do, ever since 
Patrick Henry bearded the king's minions in the Vir- 
ginia legislature, in old colony times. But we are 
prepared to back up our declamation with a few facts. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FOREIGN DIPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 

The facts to ^liich we have alluded relate to the 
methods resorted to, by the oligarchy which governs 
Great Britain, in order to render London the commer- 
cial and financial centre of the world, and to render 
all other nations tributaries to the British. 

Great Britain is an island of moderate extent, rais- 
ing corn enough to support the inhabitants. Her 
enormous wealth has been accumulated by manufac- 
tures of cloth and iron, the sale of which she has made 
it the object of her policy to thrust upon other nations 
to the ruin and destruction of their own manufacturing 
industry. 

If a nation is possessed of natural advantages equal 
(68) 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 69 

or superior to those of Great Britain, it is her duty to 
protect her mechanics against foreign influence, and 
thus enable them to manufacture for themselves. If 
a nation has iron ore, and a climate and soil fit for the 
raising of wool and cotton, she ought never to import 
a yard of cloth, a rod of rail for her iron roads, or a 
single article of hardware from Great Britain, at the 
risk of preserving the financial ascendancy of London 
and enslaving or starving her own mechanics. 

In order to blind foreign nations to the nature of 
the imposture, by which she cheats and robs foreign 
nations, she calls her policy free trade. People love 
the very name of freedom, and they are gulled by this 
specious name into their own ruin. In order to make 
it more palatable to foreign nations, she hires writers 
and buys up newspapers to cry down the opposite po- 
licy of PROTECTION TO NATIONAL INDUSTRY aS a narrOW 

minded and illiberal system, opposed to freedom. 

Where Great Britain applies her system to a coun- 
try under despotic rulers, she buys up the government 
or cheats it by a commercial treaty, with all the real 
advantages on her own side, as in the case of Portugal 
and Turkey. Where the country is barbarous or half 
civilized, she conquers and enslaves it, annexing it as 



70 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

a colony of her own, and forcing her free trade system 
on the people at the point of the bayonet, as in India. 
Where her immediate object is to poison and demora- 
lize the people of a foreign nation with a view to their 
future subjugation and annexation, she first employs 
her commercial marine in smuggling the poison into 
the country, and when the government resists this 
measure, she declares war, burns their seaports, mur- 
ders a few thousands of their people, and compels 
them to permit the free trade in poison to go on, as in 
the case of China, forced into submission by what is 
called the "opium war." When the nation to be 
cheated and enslaved is powerful and free, she works 
by secret influence on the government, bribes execu- 
tive officers and legislators, buys up newspapers and 
pays needy scribblers for decrying the policy of pro- 
tection to the national industry, as in the case of the 
United States at the present time. 

To show that we are not without ample support from 
history in the assertions we make, we will now cite a 
few pages from a writer of our own country, whose 
works are treated with marked respect in every coun- 
try of Europe not under British influence, and whose 
name is detested in England on account of the tremen- 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 71 

dous array of facts by wliich he has assailed the Bri- 
tish system of free trade. We mean, of course, Henry 
C. Carey. In a recent work, he thus sets forth the 
operations of British free trade in Portugal and Turkey. 
Let Americans consider and read the faets, and com- 
pare them with what has been going on in this country 
recently, and what is the state of facts at the present 
time. 

" In point of natural advantages. Portugal is equal 
to any country in Western Europe. The soil is capa- 
ble of yielding largely of every description of grain, 
and her climate enables her to cultivate the grape and 
the olive. Mineral riches abound, and her rivers give 
to a large portion of the country every facility for 
cheap intercourse, and yet her people are among the 
most enslaved, while her government is the weakest 
and most contemptible of Europe. 

"It is now a century and a half since England 
granted her what were deemed highly important ad- 
vantages in regard to wine ; on condition that she 
should discard the artisans who had been brought to 
the side of the farmers, and permit the people of Eng- 
land to supply her people with certain descriptions of 
of manufactures. What were the duties then agreed 



72 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

on are not given in any of the books now at hand, but 
by the provisions of a treaty made in 1810, cloths of 
all descriptions were to be admitted at merely a re- 
venue duty, varying from ten to fifteen per cent. A 
natural consequence of this system has been that the 
manufactures which up to the date of the Methuen 
treaty had risen in that country, perished under 
foreign competition, and the people found themselves 
by degrees limited exclusively to agricultural employ- 
ment. 

" Mechanics found there no place for the exercise of 
their talents, towns could not grow, schools could not 
arise, and the result is seen in the following paragraph. 

"It is surprising how ignorant, or superficially ac- 
quainted, the Portuguese are with every kind of handi- 
craft ; a carpenter, awkward and clumsy, spoiling 
every work he attempts, and the way in which the 
doors and wood work even of good houses are finished, 
would have suited the rudest ages. Their carriages 
of all kinds from the fidalgo's family coach to the 
peasant's market cart, their argricultural implements, 
locks and keys, etc., are ludicrously bad. They seem 
to disdain improvements, and are so infinitely below 
par, so strikingly inferior to. the rest of Europe, as to 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 73 

form a sort of disgraceful wonder in the middle of the 
nineteenth century." — Baillie. 

The population, which, half a century since, was 
three million six hundred and eighty three thousand, 
is now reduced to a little more than three millions, 
and we need no better evidence of the enslaving and 
exhausting tendency of a policy that limits a whole 
people, men, women, and children, to the labors of the 
field. At the close of almost a century and a half of 
this system, the following is given, in a work of high 
reputation, as a correct picture of the state of the 
country and the strength of the government. 

" The finances of Portugal are in the most deplora- 
ble condition, the treasury is dry, and all branches 
of the public service suffer. A carelessness and a 
mutual apathy reign not only throughout the govern- 
ment, but also throughout the nation. While improve- 
ment is sought every where else throughout Europe, 
Portugal remains stationary. The postal service of 
the country offers a curious example of this, nineteen 
to twenty- one days being still required for a letter to 
go and come between Lisbon and Braganza, a distance 
of four hundred and twenty- three and a half kelometres, 
(or a little over three hundred miles) all the resources 

7 



74 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

of the state are exhausted, and it is probable that the 
receipts will not give one third of the amount for 
which they figure in the budget." Annuaire de VEco- 
nomie Politique 1849, p. 322. 

Some years since an efi'ort was made to bring the 
artisan to the side of the farmer and wine grower, but 
a century and a half of exclusive devotion to agricul- 
ture had placed the people so far in the rear of those 
of other nations, that the attempt was hopeless, the 
country having long since become a mere colony of 
Great Britain. 

If we turn to Madeira, we find there further evi- 
dence of the exhausting consequences of the separa- 
tion of the farmer and the artisan. From 1836, to 
1842, the only period for which returns are before me, 
there was a steady decline in the amount of agricul- 
tural production, until the diminution had reached 
about thirty per cent, as follows. 





WINE. 


WHEAT. 


BABLEY. 


1836. 


27.270 pipes. 


8.472 qrs. 


3.510. 


1842. 


16.131 *' 


6.863 ^' 


2.777. 



At this moment (1853) the public papers furnish an 
' Appeal to America," commencing as follows : 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 75 

^^ A calamity has fallen on Madeira unparalleled in 
its history. The vintage, the revenue of which fur- 
nished the chief means of providing subsistence for its 
inhabitants, has been a total failure, and the potato 
crop, formerly another important article for their food, 
is still extensively diseased. All classes, therefore, are 
suffering, and as there are few sources in the island to 
which they can look for food, clothing, and other ne- 
cessaries of life, their distress must increase during the 
winter, and the future is contemplated with painful 
anxiety and apprehension. Under such appalling 
prospects, the zealous and excellent civil governor, 
Senor Jose Silvectre Ribeiro, addressed a circular letter 
to the merchants of Madeira, on the 24th of August 
last, for the purpose of bringing the unfortunate and 
and critical position of the population under his gov- 
ernment to the notice of the benevolent and charitable 
classes in foreign countries, and in the hope of excit- 
ing their sympathy with, and assistance to, so many 
of their fellow creatures threatened with famine." 

Such are the necessary consequences of a system 
which looks to compelling the whole population of a 
country to employ themselves in a single pursuit — all 
cultivating the land, and all producing the samo 



76 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

commodity ; and which thus effectually prevents the 
growth of that natural association so much admired 
by Adam Smith. It is one that can end only in the 
exhaustion of the land and its owner. When popula- 
tion increases and men come together, even the poor 
land is made rich, and thus it is, says M. de Jonnes, 
that ^' the power of manure causes the poor lands of the 
Seine to yield thrice as much as those of the Loire."* 

"WTien population diminishes, and men are thus 
forced to live at greater distances from each other, 
even the rich lands become impoverished ; and of this 
no better evidence need be sought than that furnished 
by Portugal. In the one case, each day brings men 
nearer to perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, 
and trade ; in the other, they become from day to day 
more barbarized and enslaved, and the women are more 
and more driven to the field, there to become the slaves 
of fathers, husbands, brothers, and even of sons. 

Such, according to our authority, is the condition 
of Portugal and her once floui^ishing colony of Ma- 
deira, after enjoying, in the fullest manner, for a cen- 
tury and a half, the advantages of free trade with her 
beloved ally Great Britain. It is true Great Britain 

^ Statistique de I'Agriculture de la France, p. 129. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 77 

buys her Port wine and makes it the principal article 
of consumption in the way of wine ; but this is done 
to make a show of reciprocity. The result of the free 
trade system has brought to Portugal ruin and pros- 
tration in all her material interests. The natural con- 
sequence that the country which conquered and held 
one third of India, in the time of Albuquerque, when 
England had not a colony in the world, has now sunk 
to such political insignificance that the presence of a 
British frigate, more or less in the harbor of Lisbon, 
is sufficient to determine a change of dynasty for that 
wretched country. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FOREIGN LMPOSTUHE IN COMIVIEIICE. 

(continued.) 

England is fond of calling Turkey her " ancient 
ally;" but that did not prevent her from aiding Rus- 
sia in annihilating the Turkish fleet, at Navarino, an 
error which she is now expiating at Sabastopol. Nei- 
ther has it prevented her from ruining Turkey by the 
same system of British free trade, which has ruined 
Portugal. Let us see what the authority already 
quoted says in this connection : 

" Of all the countries of Europe, there is none pos- 
sessed of natural advantages to enable it to compare 
with those constituting the Turkish Empire in Europe 
(78) 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 79 

and Asia. Wool, silk, corn, oil, and tobacco, might, 
■with proper cultivation, be produced in almost unli- 
mited quantity, while Thessaly and Macedonia, long 
celebrated for the production of cotton, abound in 
lands uncultivated, from which it might be obtained in 
suflScient quantity to clothe a large portion of Europe. 
Iron ore also abounds, and in quality equal to any in 
the world, w^hile in another part of the empire, ' the 
hills seem a mass of carbonate of copper.'* Nature 
has done every thing for the people of that country, 
and yet of all those of Europe, the Turkish rayah ap- 
proaches in condition nearest to a slave ; and of all 
the governments of Europe, that of Portugal not even 
excepted, that of Turkey is the most a slave to the dic- 
tation, not only of nations, but even of bankers and 
traders. Why it is so, we may now inquire. 

'^ By the terms of the treaty with England, in 1675, 
the Turkish government bound itself to charge no more 
than three per cent, duty on imports, f and as this 
could contribute little to the revenue, that required to 
be sought elsewhere. A poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, 

^ Urquhart's Resources of Turkey, p. 199. 

f Equivalent to light port charges, the anchorage being only 
sixteen cents per ship. 



80 



THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 



and many other direct taxes, furnished a part of it, 
and the balance was obtained by an indirect tax in the 
form of export duties ; and as the corn, tobacco, cot- 
ton, of its people were obliged to compete in the ge- 
neral markets of the world with the produce of other 
lands, it is clear that these duties constituted a further 
contribution from the cultivators of the empire, in aid 
of the various direct taxes that have been mentioned. 
So far as foreigners were interested, the system was 
one of perfect trade and direct taxation. 

'^ For many years Turkey manufactured much of 
her cotton, and she exported cotton yarn. Such was 
the case as recently as 1798, as will be seen by the 
following very interesting account of one of the seats 
of manufacture. 

"Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a bo- 
rough of Holland, than a village of Turkey. This vil- 
lage spreads, by its industry, movement, and life, over 
the surrounding country, and gives birth to an immense 
commerce, which unites Germany to Greece by a thous- 
and threads. Its population has trebled in fifteen 
years, and amounts at present (1798) to four thousand, 
who live in their manufactories, like swarms of bees 
in their hives. In this villao;e are unknown vices and 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 81 

cares engendered by idleness ; the hearts of the Am- 
6elakiots are pure and their faces serene ; the slavery 
which blasts the plains watered by the Peneus, and 
stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides 
of Pelion (Ossa ;) and they govern themselves like their 
ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and 
their own magistrates. Twice the Mussulmen of La- 
nissa attempted to scale their rocks, and twice they 
were repulsed by hands that dropped the shuttle to 
seize the musket. 

"Every arm, even those of the children, is em- 
ployed in the factories ; while the men dye the cotton, 
the women prepare and spin it. There are twenty- 
four factories, in which yearly two thousand five hun- 
dred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes 
each, were dyed. This yarn found its way into Ger- 
many, and was disposed of at Buda, Vienna, Leipsic, 
Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth. The Ambelakiot 
merchants had houses of their own in all these places. 
These houses belonged to distinct associations at Am- 
belakia. The competition thus established reduced 
very considerably the common profits ; they proposed 
therefore to unite themselves under one central com- 
mercial administration. Twenty-five years ago this 



82 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

plan was suggested, and a year afterwards it was car- 
ried into execution. The lowest shares in this joint 
stock company were five thousand piasters, (between 
six and seven hundred pounds sterling,) and the highest 
were restricted to twenty thousand, that the capitalists 
might not swallow up all the profits. The workmen 
subscribed their little profits, and uniting in societies, 
purchased single shares, and besides their capital, their 
labor was reckoned in the general amount, they re- 
ceived their share of the profits accordingly; and 
abundance was soon spread throughout the whole 
community. The dividends were at first restricted 
to ten per cent, and the surplus profit was applied 
to the augmenting of the capital ; which in two years 
was raised from six hundred thousand to one million 
piasters, (twenty thousand pounds.) 

' It supplied industrious Germany, not by the per- 
fection of its jennies, but by the industry of its spindle 
and distafl". It taught Montpellier the art of dyeing, 
not from experimental chairs, but because dying was 
with it a domestic and culinary operation, subject to 
daily observation in every kitchen ; and by the sim- 
plicity and honesty, not the science of its system, it 
reads a lesson to commercial associations, and holds 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 83 

up an example unparalleled. In the commercial history 
of Europe, of a joint stock and labor company, ably 
and economically and successfully administered, in 
which the interests of industry and capital were long 
equally represented. Yet the system of administra- 
tion, with which all this is connected, is common to 
the thousand hamlets of Thessaly, that have not emer- 
ged from their insignificance; but Ambelakia for 
twenty years was left alone.'* 

" At that time, however, England had invented ma- 
chinery for spinning cotton, and, by prohibiting its 
export, had provided that all the cotton of the world 
should be brought to Manchester before it could be 
cheaply converted into cloth. 

'' The cotton manufactures at Ambelakia had their 
difficulties to encounter, but all those might have been 
overcome, had they not, says, Mr. Urquhart, been out- 
stripped by Manchester.' 

" They were outstripped and twenty years afterward, 
not only had that place been deserted, but others in its 
neighborhood were reduced to complete desolation. 
Native manufactories for the production of cotton 



^Beaujour's Tableau de Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urqu- 
hart. p. 47. 



84 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

goods had, indeed, almost ceased to work. Of six 
hundred looms at Scutari in 1812, but forty remained 
in 1821, and of the two thousand weaving establish- 
ments at Tournovo in 1812 but two hundred remained 
in 1830,* 

" For a time, cotton went abroad to be returned in 
the form of a twist, thus making a voyage of thousands 
of miles in search of a spindle ; but even this trade 
has in a great degree passed away. As a consequence 
of these things there has been a ruinous fall of wages, 
affecting all classes . of laborers. ' The profits' says, 
Mr. Urquhart, "have been reduced to one half, and 
sometimes one third, by the introduction of English 
cottons, which, though, they have reduced the home 
price, and arrested the export of cotton-yarn from 
Turkey, have not yet supplanted the home manufac- 
ture in any visible degree ; for until tranquillity has 
allowed agriculture to revive, the people must go on 
working merely for bread, and reducing their price, in 
a struggle of hopeless competition. The industry, how- 
ever, of the women and children is most remarkable ; 
in every interval of labor, tending the cattle, carry- 
ing water, the spindle and distaff, as in the days of 

•^Urquhart, p. 150. 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 85 

Xerxes, is never out of their hands. The children 
are assiduously at work, from the moment their little 
fingers can turn the spindle. About Ambelakia, the 
former focus of the cotton-yarn trade, the peasantry 
has suffered dreadfully from this, though formerly the 
women could earn as much in doors, as their husbands 
in the field ; at present (1831) their daily profit, 
does not exceed twenty paras, if realized for often 
they cannot dispose of their yarn when spun. 

PIASTEES, PARAS. 

Five okes of uncleaned cotton, at seventeen paras, 2 5 

Labor of a woman for 2 days, at 7 farthings a day, 35 

Carding, by vibrations of cat-gut, 10 

Spinning, a woman's unremitting labor for a week, 5 30 

Loss of cotton, exceeding an oke of uncleaned cotton, 20 



Value of one oke of uncleaned cotton, Prs. 9 00 

" Here a woman's labor makes but two pence per day ; 
while field labor, according to the season of the year, 
ranges from four to six pence, and at this rate, the 
pound of coarse cotton-yarn costs in spinning five 
pence, p 147. 

" The labor of a woman is estimated at less than four 

cents per day, and ' the unremitting labor of a week, 

8 



86 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

will command but twenty -five cents. The wages of 
men employed in gathering leaves and attending silk 
worms are stated at one piastre (five cents) per day, 
At Salonica, the shipping port of Thessaly they 
were ten cents. — Urquliartj 268. 

" As a necessary consequence of this, population 
diminishes, and everywhere are seen the ruins of once 
prosperous villages. Agriculture declines from day 
to day. The once productive cotton-fields of Thessaly 
lie untilled, and even around Constantinople itself 
there are no cultivated lands to speak of within 
twenty miles, in some directions within fifty miles. 
The commonest necessaries of life come from distant 
parts; the corn for daily bread from Odessa; the 
cattle and sheep from beyond Adrianople, or from 
Asia Minor ; the rice, of which vast consumption is 
made, from the neighborhood of Phillipopolis ; the 
poultry chiefly from Bulgaria ; the fruit and vegeta- 
bles from Nicomedia and Macedonia. Thus a con- 
stant drain of money is occasioned without any visible 
return except to the treasury or from the property of 
Ulema: — Slades Travels in Turkey^ Vol ii. p. 143. 

" The silk that is made is badly prepared, because 
the distance of the artisan prevents the poor people 



POREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 87 

from obtaining good machinery and as a consequence 
of this, the former direct trade with Persia has been 
superseded by an indirect one through England, to 
which the raw silk has now to be sent. In every de- 
partment of industry we see the same result. Birming- 
ham has superseded Damascus, where blades are now 
no longer made. 

''Not only is the foreigner free to introduce his wares, 
but he may, on payment of a trifling duty of two per 
cent., carry them throughout the empire until finally 
disposed of. He travels by caravans and is lodged 
without expense. He brings his goods to be ex- 
changed for money, or what else he needs, and the ex- 
change effected, he disappears as suddenly as he came. 

"'It is impossible,' says Mr. Urquhart 'to wit- 
ness the many tongued caravan in its resting place 
for the night, and see, unladen and piled up together, 
the bales from such distant places to glance over the 
very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters 
which they bear without being amazed at so eloquent 
a contradiction of our preconceived notions of indis- 
criminate despotism and universal insecurity of the 
East. But while we observe the avidity with which 
our goods are sought, the preference now transferred 



88 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

from Indian to Birmingliam, muslins from Golconda 
to Glasgow chintzes, from Damascus to Sheffield steel, 
from Cashmere shawls to English broadcloth; and 
while at the same time, the energies of the commercial 
spirit are brought thus substantially before us ; it is 
indeed impossible not to regret that a gulf of separa- 
tion should have so long divided the East and "West, 
and equally impossible not to indulge in the hope and 
anticipation of a vastly extended traffic with the East, 
and of all the blessings which follow fast and revelling 
in the wake of commerce.' — p. 133. 

" Among the ' blessings' of the system is the fact that 
local places of exchange no longer exist. The store- 
keeper who pays rent and taxes has found himself 
unable to compete with the pedlar who pays neither ; 
and the consequence is that the poor cultivator finds 
it impossible to exchange his products small as they 
are, for the commodities he needs, except on the ar- 
rival of a caravan, and that has generally proved far 
more likely to absorb the little money in circulation, 
than any of the more bulky and less valuable products 
of the earth.' 

^^ As usual in purely agricultural countries, the whole 
body of cultivators is hopelessly in debt, and the money 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 89 

lender fleeces all. If he aids the peasant before har- 
vest, he must have an enormous interest, and be paid 
in produce, at a large discount, from the market price. 
The village committees are almost universally in debt, 
but to them, as the security is good, the banker 
charges only twenty per cent, per annum. Turkey is the 
very paradise of middle men, a consequence of the 
absence of any mode of employment except in culti- 
vation or in trade, and the moral effect of this may be 
seen in the following passage : — " 

'''If you see,' says Urquhart 'a Turk meditating 
in a corner, it is on some speculation, the purchase of 
a revenue farm, or the propriety of a loan at sixty per 
cent. ; if you see pen or paper in his hand, it is making 
or checking an account ; if there is a disturbance in 
the street, it is a disputed barter ; whether in the 
streets or in-doors, whether in a coifee house, a seria, 
or a bazaar, whatever the rank, nation, language of 
the persons around you, traffic, barter, gain, are the 
prevailing impulses; grusch, para, florin, hia, asper, 
amid the Babel of tongues, are the universally inteli- 
gible sounds." — p. 138. 

"We have thus a whole people divided into two 
classes, the plunderers and the plundered ; and the 

8* 



90 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

cause of this may be found in the fact that the owners 
and occupants of land have never been permitted to 
strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural 
alliance between the plough and the loom, the ham- 
mer and the harrow, so much admired by Adam 
Smith. The government is as weak as the people, for 
it is so entirely dependant on the bankers, that they may 
be regarded as the real owners of the land and the 
people, taxing them at discretion ; and to them cer- 
tainly inure all the profits of cultivation. As a con- 
sequence of this, the land is almost valueless. A 
recent traveller states that good land maybe purchased, 
in the immediate vicinity of Smyrna, at six cents an acre, 
and at a little distance vast quantities may be had for 
nothing. Throughout the world the freedom of men 
has grown in the ratio of the increase in the value of 
land, and that has always grown in the ratio of the 
tendency to have the artisan take his place by the 
cultivator of the earth. Whatever tends to prevent 
this natural association, tends, therefore, to the de- 
basement and enslavement of man. 

" The weakness of Turkey as regards foreign nations 
is great, and it increases every day. Not only am- 
bassadors, but consuls, beard it in its own cities ; and 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 91 

it is even now denied that she has any rigid to adopt 
a system of trade different from that under which she 
has become thus weakened.''' Perfect freedom of com- 
merce is declared to be ' one of those immunities 
which we can resign on no account or pretext whatever, 
it is a golden privilege which we can never abandon. 'f 
"Internal trade scarcely exists, and, as a natural 
consequence, the foreign one is insignificant, the whole 
value of the exports being but about thirty-three mil- 
lions of dollars, or less that two dollars per head. 
The total exports from Great Britain in the last 
year amounted to but two millions two hundred and 
twenty-one thousand pounds, or eleven million dollars, 
much of which was simply en route for Persia ; and 
this constitutes the great trade which has been built 
up at so much cost to the people of Turkey, and that 
is to be maintained as ^ a golden privilege,' not to be 
abandoned ! Not discouraged by the result of past 
efforts, the same author looks forward anxiously for 
the time when there shall be in Turkey no employment 

^ The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan, are 
strikingly illustrative of the exhausting effects of a system that 
looks wholly to the exports of the raw produce of the earth, and 
thus tends to the ruin of the soil and its owner. 

f Urquhart, p. 257. 



92 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

in manufactures of any kind, and when the people shall 
be exclusively employed in agriculture ; and the time 
cannot, he thinks, be far distant, as ' a few pence 
more or less in the price of a commodity will make the 
difference of purchasing or manufacturing at home.'"^ 

" Throughout the book, he shows that the rudeness 
of the machinery of cultivation is in direct ratio of 
the distance of the cultivator from the market ; and 
yet he would desire that all the produce of the coun- 
try should go to a distant market to be exchanged, 
although the whole import of iron at the present mo- 
ment for the supply of a population of almost twenty 
millions of people, possessing iron ore, fuel, and unem- 
ployed labor in unlimited quantity, is but twenty-five 
hundred pounds sterling per annum, or about a penny's 
worth for every thirty persons ! Need we wonder at 
the character of the machinery, the poverty and slavery 
of the people, the trivial amount of commerce, or at 
the weakness of the government whose whole system 
looks at the exhaustion of the land, and to the exclu- 
sion of that great middle class of working men, to 
whom the agriculturalist has every where been indebted 
for his freedom ? 

^ Urquliart, p. 202. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 93 

" The facts thus far given, have been taken, as the 
reader will have observed, from Mr. Urquhart's work ; 
and as that gentleman is a warm admirer of the sys- 
tem denounced by Adam Smith, he cannot be sus- 
pected of any exaggeration when presenting any of its 
unfavorable results. Later travellers exhibit the na- 
tion as passing steadily on towards ruin, and the people 
towards a state of slavery the most complete — the ne- 
cessary consequence of a policy that excludes the me- 
chanic, and prevents the formation of a town popula- 
tion. Among the latest of these travellers is Mr. Mac 
Farlane.* At the date of whose visit, the silk manufac- 
ture had entirely disappeared, and even the filatures 
for preparing the raw silk were closed, weavers having 
become ploughmen, and women and children having 
been totally deprived of employment. The cultivator 
of silk had become entirely dependent on foreign mar- 
kets, in which there existed no demand for the pro- 
ducts of their land and labor. England was then pass- 
ing through one of her periodical crises, and it had been 
deemed necessary to put down the prices of all agri- 
cultural products, with a view to stop importation. On 
one occasion, during Mr. Mac Farlane's travels, there 

^ " Turkey and its Destiny," by C. Mac Farlane, Esq., 1850. 



94 .THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

was a report that silk had risen in England, and it pro- 
duced a momentary stir and animation, that, he says, 
'flattered his national vanity to think that an electric 
touch parting from London, the mighty heart of com- 
merce, should be felt in a few days at a place like 
Biljek.' Such is commercial centralization ! It ren- 
ders the agriculturalists of the world mere slaves, de- 
pendent for food and clothing upon the will of a few 
people, proprietors of a small amount of machinery, 
at ' the mighty heart of commerce.' At one moment 
speculation is rife, and silk goes up in price, and then 
every efibrt is made to induce large shipments of the 
raw produce of the world. At the next, money is said 
to be scarce, and the shippers are ruined, as was, to a 
great extent, experienced by those who exported corn 
from this country in 1847. 

'^ At the date of the traveller's first visit to Broussa, 
the villages were numerous, and the silk manufacture 
was prosperous. At the second, the silk works were 
stopped, and their owners bankrupt, the villages even 
gradually disappearing, and in the town itself scarcely 
a chimney was left, while the country around presented 
to view nothing but poverty and wretchedness. Every 
where, throughout the empire, the roads are bad. 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 95 

and becoming worse, and the condition of the cultivator 
deteriorates ; for if he has a surplus to sell, most of 
its value at market is absorbed by the cost of trans- 
portation, and if his crop is short, prices rise so high, 
that he cannot purchase. Famines are therefore fre- 
quent, and child-murder prevails throughout all classes 
of society. Population, therefore, diminishes, and the 
best lands are abandoned, ' nine-tenths' of them re- 
maining untilled;* the natural consequence of which 
is, that malaria prevails in many of those parts of the 
country that once were most productive, and pesti- 
lence comes in aid of famine for the extermination of 
the unfortunate people. Native mechanics are nowhere 
to be found, there being no demand for them, and the 
plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally 
rude and barbarous. The product of labor is, conse- 
quently, most diminutive, and its wages two-pence a 
day, with a little food. The interest of money varies 
from twenty-five to fifty per cent, per annum, and this 
rate is frequently paid for in the loan of bad seed that 
yields but little to land or labor. 

" With the decline of population, and the disappear- 
ance of all the local places of exchange, the pressure 
* Mac Farlane, Vol. i. p. 4G. 



96 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

of the conscription becomes from year to year more 
severe, and droves of men may be seen ' chained like 
wild beasts — free Osmanlees driven along the road like 
slaves to a market' — free men, separated from wives 
and children, who are left to perish of starvation amid 
the richest lands, that remain untilled because of the 
separation of the artisan, from the producer of food, 
silk, and cotton. Internal commerce is trifling in 
amount, and the power to pay for foreign merchandise 
has almost passed away. Land is nearly valueless ; 
and in this we find the most convincing proof of the 
daily increasing tendency towards slavery, man hav- 
ing always become enslaved as land has lost its value. 
" Jn the great valley of Buyuk-dere, once known as 
the fair land, a property of twenty miles in circumfe- 
rence had, shortly before his visit, been purchased for 
less than one thousand pounds, or four thousand eight 
hundred dollars.* In another part of the country, one 
of twelve miles in circumference had been purchased 
for a considerably smaller sum.f The slave trade, 
black and white, had never been more active ;t and 
this was a necessary consequence of the value of labor 
and land. 

^ Mac Farlane, p. 296. f Ibid. Vol. i. p. 37. 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 97 

'' In this country, negro men are well fed, clothed, 
and are gradually advancing towards freedom. Popu- 
lation, therefore increases, although more slowly than 
would be the case were they enabled to combine their 
efforts for the improvement of their condition. In the 
West Indies, Portugal, and Turkey, being neither well- 
fed, clothed, nor lodged, their condition declines ; and 
as they can neither be bought nor sold, they are al- 
lowed to die off, and the population diminishes as the 
tendency towards the subjugation of the laborer be- 
comes more and more complete. Which of these con- 
ditions tends most to favor advance in civilization the 
reader may decide.'' 

Such is Mr. Carey's account of what British free 
trade has done for Turkey. It was written before the 
present war with Russia on the one hand, and Turkey 
and her allies on the other, had commenced. It throws 
some light on the motives of England in engaging in 
the war. She was unwilling to have Turkey freed 
from British free trade. The czar called Turkey a 
" sick man," and wished to take charge of the invalid ; 
but England wished to retain the privilege of doctor- 
ing him with a little more free trade. In endeavoring 
to accomplish this object, England has incurred the 

9 



98 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

deepest and most indelible disgrace. Never was there 
exhibited such imbecility and folly, as that which the 
aristocratic officers of the English army at Sebastopol 
have shown. The rank and file, by their ball-dog 
courage alone, saved the English army thus far from 
utter annihilation. Whether that alone will ultimately 
save it remains to be seen. 

The hypocritical pretences under which England 
has entered upon the war, have been exposed by a mem- 
ber of parliament in his place. In a British paper, 
just received, we find the following article : 

" Mr. Cobden has been asking some questions in 
the British parliament, which are found rather hard to 
answer. He said., ' Before considering other questions 
in relation to the war, it was necessary to ask what 
was its object, respecting which he could never get 
any intelligible notion. Some suppose it was to open 
the Black Sea, or the Danube, to merchant vessels, 
whereas both were open. Others imagined that we 
had a treaty with the Sultan binding us to defend him 
and his dominions. But Lord Aberdeen has declared 
that no such treaty existed before the war. There was, 
indeed, a strong feeling out of doors that Russia had 
oppressed certain nationalities, and he assumed that 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 99 

the statesman's ground of war was to defend the Turkish 
empire against the encroachments of Russia, and to 
keep the states of Europe within their present limits. 
But were not the other nations of Europe as much in- 
terested as we in this object, and in withstanding a 
deluge of barbarism ? And had we not accomplished 
the object when Russia renounced all intention of in- 
vading Turkey, and as acknowledged by Lord J. Russell, 
made proposals of peace on the basis of the four points ? 
Austria and Prussia, it was said, had agreed to these 
terms, and they were more interested in the quarrel 
than we ; why, then, should we not entertain them ? 
We were not to be Don Quixottes, to fight the battles 
of the world. The destruction of Sebastopol would 
not prevent its re-construction or the fortification of 
some other port in the Black Sea. Nor would it secure 
Turkey, which could be safe only when its internal 
condition was improved, and its administration re- 
formed, and its resources developed; whereas Avar 
demoralized the Turks — whom, since our arrival, we 
had humiliated and degraded. The country had been 
misled into a belief that the Mahommedan population 
of Turkey, which Avas perishing, was incapable of rege- 
neration, which Avas a delusion. Instead, then, of con- 



100 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

tinuing war, — having accomplished its original object, 
as declared in the Queen's speech — why not take even 
chance of the result of accepting the proposals of peace, 
especially if, as Mr. Layard had predicted, the war 
was only beginning?" 

In these remarks of Mr. Cobden, the real cause of 
the war leaks out, probably without any intention on 
his part. He says that '' Turhey could he safe only 
when its internal condition was improved^ its admini- 
stration reformed^ and its resources developed'' — in 
other words, when it should rid itself of the incubus of 
British free trade. If England had not destroyed the 
manufactures of Turkey, Turkey would not have be- 
come a side man, Russia would not have invaded her 
territory, western diplomacy would not have paralysed 
her means of resistance, and England and France 
would not have engaged in a war under false pretences, 
disgraceful alike in its motives and its conduct. 

We now pass to another exhibition of the blessings 
of British free trade. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

WHAT FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE HAS DONE 
FOR INDIA. 

Before the conquest of India, by the British, the 
people of that country were comparatively free and 
happy. This we learn from the testimony of British 
writers. ''The natives of Hindoostan," says Mr. 
Greig, " seem to have lived from the earliest, down, 
comparatively speaking, to late times — -if not free 
from the troubles and annoyances to which men in all 
condition of society are more or less subject, still in 
the full enjoyment, each individual, of his own pro- 
perty, and of a very considerable share of personal 
liberty.'' 

The Mahommedan conquerors respected the local 
9* (101) 



102 THE ENEMIES OF AMEUICA UNMASKED. 

institutions of the country, and permitted the people 
to accumulate property without interfering with the 
pursuits of industry. They thus protected the manu- 
facturers of the country effectually from the pernicious 
system called free trade, which has since reduced them 
to beggary and slavery. Manufactures were widely 
spread, and thus made a demand for the labor not re- 
quired in agriculture. '' On the coast of Coromandel" 
says Orme, ''and in the province of Bengal, it is diffi- 
cult to find a village in which every man, woman, and 
child, is not employed in making a piece of cloth. At 
present," he continues, " much the greatest part of the 
whole provinces are employed in this single manufac- 
ture. Its progress," as he says, "includes no less 
than a description of the lives of half the inhabitants 
of Hindostan." "While employment," says Carey, 
"was thus locally subdivided, tending to enable neigh- 
bor to exchange with neighbor, the exchanges between 
the producers of food, or of salt, in one part of the 
country ; and the producers of cotton and manufac- 
turers of cloth in another, tending to the production 
of commerce with more distant men, and this tendency 
was much increased by the subdivision of the cotton 
manufacture itself. Beno-al was celebrated for the 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 103 

finest muslins, the consumption of which at Delhi, and 
in Northern India generally was large, while the Coro- 
mandel coast was equally celebrated for the best 
chintzes and calicoes, leaving to Western India the 
manufacture of strong and inferior goods of every 
kind. Under these circumstances, it is no matter of 
surprise that the country was rich, and that its people, 
although often over-taxed, and sometimes plundered 
by invading armies, were prosperous in a high 
degree." 

"Nearly a century has now elapsed," says Mr. Carey, 
" since, by the battle of Plassy, British power was es- 
tablished in India, and from that day local action has 
tended to disappear, and centralization to take its 
place. From its date to the close of the century, there 
was a rapidly increasing tendency towards having all 
the affairs of the princes and the people settled by the 
representatives of the company established in Calcutta, 
and as usual in such cases, the country was filled with 
adventurers, very many of whom were wholly without 
principles, men whose sole object was that of the ac- 
cumulation of fortune by any means, however foul, as is 
well known by all who are familiar with the indignant 
denunciations of Burke. England was thus enriched 



104 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

as India was impoverislied, and as centralization was 
more and more established." 

"We might give the details of the oppressive system 
of taxation and exaction by which the British have 
brought the people of India into a state of com- 
plete and literal slavery. Their system of taxation 
has reached a point unparalleled in history. One half 
of the gross prodace of the land is the average annual 
rent, although in many cases it greatly exceeds that 
amount. The Madi-as Revenue Board, May 17, 1817, 
stated that the conversion of the government share of 
of the produce of lands is in some districts as high as 
sixty or seventy per cent, of the whole. 

This statement sufficiently illustrates the effects of 
the British domination in India, as applied to that part 
of the population of India which is engaged in agri- 
cultural pursuits ; but our present object is to show the 
operation of British free trade in destroying the manu- 
factures of that country. 

By a quotation above, cited from Orme, we have 
shown theformei* existence of a flourishing manufacture 
of cotton cloth. Much of this cloth was exported, and 
it will be in the recollection of many of our readers, 
that previous to the war of 1812, an article of muslin, 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 106 

commonly called India cotton, was extensively used in 
this country. The following extract from Mr. Carey's 
work, will s1k)w how this branch of manufacture has 
been destroyed by British free trade. 

" India is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron 
ore, and if she has not good machinery, the deficiency 
is not chargeable to nature. At the close of the last 
century, cotton abounded, and to so great an extent 
was the labor of men, women, and children applied to 
its conversion into cloth, that, even with their imper- 
fect machinery, they not only supplied the home de- 
mand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca and the coarse 
products of Western India ; but they exported to other 
parts of the world no less than two hundred millions 
of pieces per annum.* Exchanges with every part of 
the world were so greatly in their favor, that a rupee 
which would now sell for but one shilling and sixpence, 
or forty-four cents, was then worth two smillings and 
eightpence, or sixty-four cents. The Company had a 
monopoly of collecting taxes in India, but in return it 
preserved the control of their domestic market, by aid 
of which they were enabled to convert their rice, their 
salt, and their cotton, into cloth that could be cheaj^ly 
^ Speech of Mr. G. Thompson, in the House of Commons. 



106 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

carried to the most remote parts of the world. Such 
protection was needed, because while England prohi- 
bited the export of even a single collier who might 
instruct the people of India in the mode of mining 
coal — of a steam engine to pump water, or raise coal, 
or a mechanic who could make one — of a worker in 
iron who might smelt the ore — of a spinning-jenny or 
a power-loom, or of an artisan who could give instruc- 
tion in the use of such machines — and thus systemati- 
cally prevented them from keeping pace with improve- 
ments in the rest, of the world, — she at the same time 
imposed very heavy duties on the produce of Indian 
looms received in England. The day was at hand, 
however, when that protection was to disappear. The 
Company did not, it was said, export sufficiently largely 
of the produce of British industry, and in 1813, the 
trade to India was thrown open — hut the restriction on 
the export of machinery and artisans was maintained 
in full force ; and thus were the poor and ignorant 
people of that country exposed to ^unlimited competi- 
tion* with a people possessed of machinery ten times 
more effective than their own, while not only by law 
deprived of the power to purchase machinery, but 
also of the power of competing in the British mar- 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 107 

ket witli the product of British looms. Further than 
this, every loom in India, and every machine calcu- 
lated to aid the laborer, was subject to a tax that in- 
creased with every increase in the industry of its owner, 
and in many cases absorbed the whole profit derived 
from its use.* Such were the circumstances under 
which the poor Hindoo was called to encounter unpro- 
tected, the ' unlimited competition' of foreigners in his 
own market. It was freedom of trade all on one side. 
Four years after, the export of cottons from Bengal 
skill amounted to one million six hundred and fifty- 
nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-four pounds 
sterling ;t but ten years later it had declined to two 
hundred and eighty-five thousand one hundred and 
twenty-one pounds sterling ; and at the end of twenty 
years, we find a whole year pass by without the export 
of a single piece of cotton cloth from Calcutta, the 
whole of the immense trade that existed, but half a 
century since, having disappeared. What were the 
measures used for the accomplishment of the work of 
destroying a manufacture that gave employment and 
food to so many millions of the poor people of the 

^^^ The Slave-Trade: Foreign and Domestic." By H.C.Carey p. 113. 
f Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, p. 74. 



108 , THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

country, will be seen on a perusal of the following me- 
morial, which shows that while India was denied ma- 
chinery, and also denied access to the British market, 
she was forced to receive British cottons free of all 
duty. 

PETITION OF THE NATIVES OF BENGAL, RELATIVE TO 
THE DUTIES ON COTTON AND SILK. 

Calcutta, Sept 1, 1831. 

To the Right HonoraUe the Lords of Sis Majesty's 

Privy Council for Trade^ etc, The humble petition 

of the undersigned, 3fanufacturers and Dealers in 

Cotton and Silk Piece Croods, the fabrics of Bengal: 

" Showeth — That of late years your Petitioners 
have found their business nearly superseded by the 
introduction of the fabrics of Great Britain into Ben- 
gal, the importation of which augments every year, to 
the great prejudice of the native manufacturers. 

'' That the fabrics of Great Britain are consumed in 
Bengal, without any duties being levied thereon to 
protect the native fabrics. 

" That the fabrics of Bengal are charged with the 
following duties when they are used in Great Britain 

'' On manufactured cottons, ten per cent. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 109 

" On manufactured silks, twenty-four per cent. 

" Your Petitioners most humbly implore your Lord- 
ships' consideration of these circumstances, and they 
feel confident that no disposition exists in England to 
shut the door against the industry of any part of the 
inhabitants of this great empire. 

" They therefore pray to be admitted to the privi- 
lege of British subjects, and humbly entreat your 
Lordships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of Ben- 
gal to be used in Great Britain ^free of duty,' or at 
the same rate which may be charged on British fabrics 
consumed in Bengal. 

" Your Lordships must be aware of the immense 
advantages the British manufacturers derive from their 
skill in constructing and using machinery, which ena- 
bles them to undersell the unscientific manufacturers 
of Bengal in their own country ; and, although your 
Petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any 
great advantage in having their prayers granted, their 
minds would feel gratified by such a manifestation of 
your Lordships' good will towards them ; and such an 
instance of justice to the natives of India will not fail 
to endear the British government to them. 

" They therefore confidently trust that your Lord- 

10 



110 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

ships' righteous consideration -will be extended to 
them as British subjects, without exception of sect, 
color, or country. 

" And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever 
pray." 

(Signed by one hundred and seventeen natives of 
great respectability.) 

"The object sought to be accomplished would not 
have, however, been attained by granting the prayer 
of this most reasonable and humble petition. When 
the export of cotton, woollen, and steam machinery 
was prohibited, it was done with a view of compelling 
all the wool of the world to come to England to be 
spun and woven, thence to be returned to be worn by 
those who raised it — thus depriving the people of the 
world of all power to apply their labor otherwise than 
in taking from the earth, cotton, sugar, indigo, and 
other commodities for the supply of the great ' work- 
shop of the world.' How eflfectually that object has 
been accomplished in India, will be seen from the fol- 
lowing facts. From the date of the opening of the 
trade in 1813, the domestic manufacture and the ex- 
port of cloth have gradually declined until the latter 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. Ill 

has finally ceased, and the export of raw cotton to En- 
gland has gradually risen until it has attained a height 
of about sixty millions of pounds,* while the import 
of twist from England has risen to twenty-five millions 
of pounds, and of cloth, to two hundred and sixty mil- 
lions of yards, weighing probably fifty millions of 
pounds, which, added to the twist, make seventy-five 
millions, requiring for their production something more 
than eighty millions of raw cotton. We see thus that 
every pound of raw material sent to England is re- 
turned. The cultivator receives for it one penny, and 
when it returns to him in the form of cloth, he pays 
for it from one to two shillings, the whole difierence 
being absorbed in the payment of the numerous 
brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, 
men, women, and children, that have thus been inter- 
posed between the producer and the consumer. The 
necessary consequence of this has been that every 
where manufactures have disappeared. Dacca, one of 
the principal seats of the cotton manufacture, con- 
tained ninety thousand houses, but its trade had al- 
ready greatly fallen oif, even at the date of the memo- 
rial above given, and its splendid buildings, factories, 

* Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, p. 28. 



112 - THE ENEMIES OP AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and churches are now a mass of ruins and overgrown 
with jungle. The cotton of the district found itself 
compelled to go to England that it might be twisted 
and sent back again, thus performing a voyage of 
twenty thousand miles in search of the little spindles, 
because it was a part of the British policy not to per- 
mit the spindle any where to take its place by the side 
of the cultivator of cotton. 

" The change thus effected has been stated in a recent 
official report to have been attended with ruin and 
distress, to which ' no parallel can be found in the 
annals of commerce/ What were the means by which 
it was effected is shown in the fact that, at this period 
Sir. Robert Peel stated that in Lancashire, children 
were employed fifteen and seventeen hours per day, 
during the week, and on Sunday morning, from six 
until twelve, cleaning the machinery. In Coventry, 
ninety-six hours in the week, was the time usually re- 
quired ; and of those employed many received but two 
shillings and nine pence or sixty-six cents for a week's 
wages. The object to be accomplished was that of 
under-working the poor Hindoo, and driving him from 
the market of the world, after which he was to be 
driven from his own. The mode of accomplishment 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 113 

was that of cheapening labor and enslaving the laborer 
at home and abroad. 

" With the decline of manufacturers there has ceased 
to be a demand for the services of woman or children 
in the work of conversion, and they are forced either 
to remain idle, or seek employment in the field ; and 
here we have one of the distinguishing marks of 
a state of slavery. The men, too, who were accus- 
tomed to fill up the intervals of other employments in 
pursuits connected with the cotton manufacture, were 
also driven to the field, and all demand for labor, 
physical or intellectual, was at an end, except so far 
as was needed for raising rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. 
The rice itself they were not permitted to clean, being 
debarred therefrom, by a duty double that which was 
paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into En- 
gland. The poor grower of cotton often paying to the 
government seventy-eight per cent, of the produce of 
his labor, found himself deprived of the power to trade 
directly with the man of the loom, and forced into 
' unlimited competition' with the better machinery, 
and almost untaxed labor of our Southern States ; 
and thereby subjected to 'the mysterious variations 
of foreign markets' in which the fever of speculation 

10* 



114 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

was followed by the chill of revulsion with a rapidity 
and frequency that set at naught all calculation. If 
our crops were small, his English customers would 
take his cotton ; but when he sent over more next 
year, there had, perhaps, been a good season here, 
and the Indian article became an absolute drug in the 
market. It was stated some time since, in the House 
of Commons, that one gentleman, Mr. Turner, had 
thrown seven thousand pounds sterling worth of In- 
dian cotton upon .a dunghill, because he could find no 
market for it. 

'^ It will now readily be seen that the direct effect of 
thus com,pelling the export of cotton from India was 
to increase the quantity pressing on the market of 
England, and thus to lower the price of all the cotton 
in the world, including that required for domestic con- 
sumption. The price of the whole Indian crop being 
thus rendered dependent on that which could be real- 
ized for a small surplus that would have no existence 
but for the fact that the domestic manufacture had 
been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous 
has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor 
cultivator by the forcible separation of the plough and 
loom, and the destruction of the power of association. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 115 

Again, while the price of cotton is fixed in England, 
there, too, is fixed the price of cloth, and such is the 
case with sugar and indigo, to the production of which 
these poor people are forced to devote themselves ; 
and thus are they rendered the mere slaves of distant 
men, who determine what they shall receive for all 
they have to sell, and what they shall pay for all they 
require to purchase. Centralization and slavery go 
thus hand and hand with each other." 

One more extract, from Mr. Carey's work, we in- 
troduce to show an incidental efi'ect of British free 
trade in India, on the moral condition and happiness 
of another country — an eflfect at which humanity 
shudders : 

" Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty 
and wretchedness grows as the people of India find 
themselves more and more compelled to resort to that 
city to make their exchanges. Under the native rule, 
the people of each little district could exchange with 
each other food for cotton or cotton cloth, paying no- 
body for the privilege. Now every man must send his 
cotton to Calcutta, thence to go to England with the 
rice and indigo of his neighbors, before he and they 
can exchange food for cloth or cotton, the larger the 



116 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

quantity they send the greater is the tendency to 
decline in price. With every extension of the system 
there is increasing inability to pay the taxes, and in- 
creasing necessity for seeking new markets in which 
to sell cloth, and collect what are called rents, and the 
more wide the extension of the system the greater is 
the difficulty of collecting revenue sufficient for keep- 
ing the machine of government in motion. This diffi- 
culty it was that drove the representatives of British 
power and civilization into becoming traders in that 
pernicious drug, opium. 

" The very best parts of India,'' as we are told,* 
" were selected for the cultivation of the poppy. The 
people were told they must either cultivate this plant, 
make opium, or give up their land. If they refused, 
they were peremptorily told they must yield or quit. 
The same Company that forced them to grow opium 
said, 'You must sell the opium to us;' and to them 
it was sold, and they gave the price they pleased to 
put upon the opium thus manufactured ; and they 
then sold it to leading speculators at Calcutta, who 
caused it to be smuggled up the Canton river, to an 
island called Sintin, and tea was received in exchange. 
■^Thompson, Lecture on India, p. 25. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 117 

At last, however, the emperor of China, after repeated 
threats, proceeded to execute summary justice ; he 
seized every particle of opium ; put under bond every 
European engaged in the merchandize of it ; and the 
papers of to-day (1839) inform us that he has cut off 
the China trade, root and branch." 

" Unhappily, however, the British nation deemed 
it expedient to make war upon the poor Chinese, and 
compel them to pay for the opium that had been de- 
stroyed ; and now the profits of the Indian govern- 
ment from poisoning a whole people have risen from 
one million five hundred thousand pounds, sterling at 
the date of the above extract, to the enormous sum of 
three millions five hundred thousand pounds, or sixteen 
million eight hundred thousand dollars, and the market 
is, as we are informed, still extending itself. That the 
reader may see and understand how directly the go- 
vernment is concerned in this eifort at demoralizing 
and enslaving the Chinese, the following will show^: 

" For the supply and manufacture of government 
opium there is a separate establishment. There are 
two great opium agencies at Ghazeepore and Patna, for 
the Benares and Bakar provinces. Each opium agent 
has several deputies in different districts, and a native 



118 . THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

establisliinent. They enter into contracts with the 
cultivators for' the supply of opium at a rate fixed to 
suit the market. The land revenue authorities do not 
interfere, except to prevent cultivation without per- 
mission. Government merely bargains with the cul- 
tivators as cultivators, in the same way as a private 
merchant would, and maJces advances to them for the 
cultivation. The only difficulty found is to prevent 
their cultivating too much, as the rates are favorable, 
government a sure purchaser, and the cultivation liked. 
The land cultivated is measured, and precaution is 
taken that the produce is all sold to government. The 
raw opium thus received is sent to the head agency, 
where it is manufactured, packed in chests and sealed 
with the company's seal."* 

It would seem to the author of this paragraph 
almost a matter of rejoicing that the Chinese are 
bound to continue large consumers of the drug. " The 
failure of one attempt has shown," as he thinks — 

" That they are not likely to effect that object ; 

and if we do not supply them, some one else will ; but 

the worst of it is, according to some people, that if 

the Chinese only legalized the cultivation in their own 

^Campbell, p. 300. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 119 

country, they could produce it much cheaper, and our 
market would be ruined. But for their sakes and ours 
we must hope that it is not so, or that they will not find 
it out.''* 

"Need we wonder, when gentlemen find pleasure in 
the idea of an increasing revenue from forcing this 
trade in despite of all the efforts of the more civilized 
Chinese government^ that intemperance increases,' 
where the British 'rule and system has been long 
established ?' Assuredly not. Poor governments are, 
as we everywhere see, driven to encourage gambling, 
drunkenness, and other immoralities, as a means of ex- 
tracting revenues from their unfortunate tax-payers ; 
and the greater the revenue thus obtained, the poorer 
become the people and the weaker the government. 
Need we be surprised that that of India should be re- 
duced to become manufacturer and smuggler of opium, 
when the people are forced to exhaust the land by 
sending away its raw products, and when the restraints 
upon mere collection of domestic salt are so great that 
English salt finds a market in India ? The following 
passage on this subject is worthy of the perusal of 
of those who desire fully to understand how it is that 

^Ibid, p. 393. 



120 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

the people of that country are restrained in the appli- 
cation of their labor, and vrhy it is that labor is so 
badly paid : — 

'' 'But those vt'ho cry out in England against the mo- 
nopoly, and their unjust exclusion from the salt trade, 
are egregriously mistaken. As concerns them, there 
is positively no monopoly, but the most absolute free 
trade. And, more than this, the only effect of the 
present mode of manufacture in Bengal is to give them 
a market which they would never otherwise have. A 
government manufacture of salt is doubtless more ex- 
pensive than a private manufacture ; but the result of 
this, and of the equality of bad and good sait, is, that 
fine English salt now more or less finds a market in 
India, whereas, were the salt duty and all the govern- 
ment interference discontinued to-morrow, the cheap 
Bengal salt would be sold at such a rate that not a 
pound of English or any other foreign salt could be 
brought into the market."^ Xevertheless the system 
is regarded as one of perfect free trade I 

"Notwithstanding all these efforts at maintaining 
the re^'enue, the debt has increased the last twelve 
years no less than fifteen millions of pounds sterling 

* Campbell, p. 384. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 121 

or seventy-two million of dollars ; and yet the govern- 
ment is absolute proprietor of all of India, and enjoys 
so large a portion of the beneficial interest in it, that 
private property therein is reduced to a sum absolutely 
insignificant, as will now be shown. 

*^ The gross land revenue obtained from a coun- 
try with an area of four hundred and ninety-one 
thousand four hundred and forty-eight square miles, 
or above three hundred millions of acres, is one hun- 
dred and fifty-one millions seven hundred and eighty- 
six thousand seven hundred and forty-three rupees, 
equal to fifteen millions of pounds sterling, or seventy- 
two millions of dollars.* What is the value of private 
rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, 
or rent, may be judged from the following facts : In 
1848-49, there were sold for taxes, in that portion 
of the country subject to the permanent settlement, 
eleven hundred and sixty-nine estates, at something 
less than four years' purchase of the tax. Further 
south, in the Madras government, where the ryot-war 
settlement is in full operation, the land ' would be sold' 
for balances of rent; but ^generally it is not,' as we 

* Campbell, p. 377. 
11 



122 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

are told, ' and for a very good reason, viz. that nobody 
will buy it.' Private right in land being there of no 
value whatsoever — 'the collector of Salem' as Mr. 
Campbell informs us — 

'^ Naively mentions ' various unauthorized modes of 
stimulating the tardy' rarely resorted to by heads of 
villages, such as ' placing him in the sun, obliging him 
to stand on one leg, or sit with his head confined be- 
tween his knees.'* 

"In the north-west provinces, Uhe settlement,' as 
our author states, ' has certainly been successful in 
giving a good market value to good landed property ;' 
that is, it sells at about ' four years' purchase on the 
revenue. 't Still further north, in the newly acquired 
provinces, we find great industry, ' every thing turned 
to account,' the assessment, to which the company 
succeeded on the deposition of the successors of Eun- 
jeet Singh, more easy, and land more valuable.J The 
value of land, like that of labor, therefore increases as 
we pass from the old to the new settlements, being 
precisely the reverse of what would be the case if the 
system tended to the enfranchisement and elevation 
of the people, and precisely what should be looked for 
^ Campbell, p. 350. f Ibid, p. 332. Ibid, p. 345. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 123 

in a country whose inhabitants were passing from free- 
dom towards slavery." 

With this extract we conclude the notices of the 
effects of British free trade in foreign countries. We 
might show its application to Ireland, whose manufac- 
tures were deliberately and systematically destroyed 
by the application of the system of British free trade 
to that country. The effects which followed are fami- 
liar to all intelligent people. The Irish people were 
ruined by it, and the country depopulated to such an 
extent that Great Britain can no longer obtain recruits 
for her armies in the " sister island ;'' but has recourse 
to German mercenaries. 

We now proceed to consider the ruinous effects of 
British free trade on our own country. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT FOREIGN IMPOSTUKE IN COMMERCE HAS DONE 
FOR THIS COUNTRY. 

With respect to this country, the object of Great 
Britain has been to make us tributury to British wealth 
and greatness ; to enslave us, by confining us to agri- 
culture alone and to prevent our establishing manufac- 
tures or to destroy them when established. This policy 
commenced in the colonial period, and has continued 
to the present day, as we will now prove. A British 
author, Joshua Gee, writing in 1750, thus sets forth 
the policy, " Manufactures in American colonies should 
be discouraged, prohibited. 

'' Great Britain with its dependencies is doubtless 
(124) 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 125 

as well able to subsist within itself as any nation in 
Europe. We have an enterprising people, fit for 
all the arts of peace or war. We have provisions in 
abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able 
to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. 
We have the very best materials for clothing, and want 
nothing either for use or luxury, but what we have at 
home, or might have from our colonies ; so that we 
might make such an intercourse of trade among our- 
selves, or between us and them, as would maintain a 
vast navigation. But we ought always to keep a 
watchful eye over our colonies, to keep them from set- 
ting up any of the manufactures which are carried on 
in Grreat Britain ; and any such attempt should be 
crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to 
grow up to maturity it will be difficult to suppress 
them." 

" Our colonies are much in the same state as Ire- 
land was in when they began the woollen manufacture, 
and as their numbers increase^ will fall up)on manufac- 
tures for clothing themselves^ if due care he not taken 
to find employment for them in raising such produc- 
tions as may enable them to furnish themselves with 
all the necessaries from us.'' 

11* 



126 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

This is the British doctrine of free trade, set forth 
in its native deformitY bv a British wi-iter. It was 
Tery faithfully carried ont during the colonial period. 
During the revolutionary war, the people were too fully 
occupied to establish manufactures eflFectually. After 
the peace. Great Britain had still a strong party in 
* this country, and her free trade policy was so effectu- 
ally imposed upon us, that, up to the breaking out of 
the war of 1812, we still imported nearly all our manu- 
factures of iron and cloth from that country. The 
greatest service which the war of IS 12 effected for the 
Cnited States was to compel its people to establish 
manufactories for themselves. 

A cotemporary* whom we shall take the liberty of 
quoting at some length, thus follows the course of 
events, from that time forward. 

" The war of 1812 found the country so nearly 
destitute of the means of clothing itself, that the go- 
vernment was unable to procure blankets or woollen 
cloth for its soldiers, or for the Indians to whom such 
commodities were due. How great was the difficulty 
experienced by reason of the colonial condition in 
which the nation had so long been kept, may be jud- 

* North American, January, 1855. 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 127 

from the fact that the Administration was obliged 
to take possession of Amelia Island, then held by 
Spain, for the purpose of enabling certain cargoes of 
cotton and woollen goods owned by Mr. Girard and 
others, and then at that island, to get within the Union, 
in defiance of the non-importation laws. Such were 
the straits to which we had been reduced by the con- 
stant maintenance of a policy that looked to having 
among us none but farmers, planters, and traders, 
almost entirely excluding the manufacturers. 

" The war gave efficient protection to manufacturers ; 
and four years later, as we learn from a recent report 
of a Committee of the House of Representatives, the 
quantity of cotton consumed within the Union, 
amounted to no less than ninety thousand bales, or 
one-third as much as was exported to foreign ports. 
The woollen manufacturers, too had largely grown, and 
employed a capital of twelve millions of dollars ; while 
iron and other branches of manufacture had made 
great progress ; and so completely had the domestic 
market for food, that had been thus created, made 
amends for our total exclusion from the market of 
Europe, that the prices of flour in this market in the 
years 1813 and 1814 ranged from six to ten dollars, 



128 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and of pork from thirteen and a half to seventeen 
dollars. 

'' The peace came, and our farmers found opened 
to them the markets of the world, by which they were 
to be enriched, and by way of preparation therefore 
the domestic market was sacrificed. Until 1818, certain 
branches of manufacture continued to enjoy protection ; 
in that year it was resolved that the duties of Congress 
were limited to securing a sufficient amount of revenue, 
and cotton and iron were condemned to sufi'er the fate 
to which had already been- subjected the manufacturers 
of woollen cloths and hardware. The revenue, as the 
people were then told, was superabundant, the years 
1816 and 1817 having yielded no less than eighty 
millions, and having enabled the treasury to make 
payments on account of the public debt, amounting 
to little short of fifty millions. It was a free trade 
millennium^ and protection was then, as now, to be re- 
garded as ^a blight.' If the artisans of the country 
could not live without protection let them die, and die 
they did. Manufactures of all kinds, of cotton, woollen 
and iron, almost entirely disappeared. 

" As a consequence, there existed throughout the 
towns and cities of the Union the most intense distress. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 129 

In Philadelphia alone, with its then small population, it 
was foundj on examination, that nearly eight thousand 
workmen were wholly without employment. In Pitts- 
burg there were found two thousand ; and as all these 
people were deprived of the means of purchasing food, 
the prices of food of all kinds rapidly declined as the 
necessity for dependence on foreign markets became 
more fully established. Flour that, in this city, had 
in 1817 and 1818 commanded ten dollars, fell in 1819 
to six dollars and a half, and in 1820 to four dollars 
and thirty cents ; and cotton and tobacco participated 
in the fall. In many parts of the country, wheat was 
sold at twenty-five, thirty and thirty-seven cents per 
bushel, and at a later period prices declined to a still 
lower point, and, as a natural consequence, the farmers 
were every where nearly, when even not quite, ruined ; 
and yet they were then almost entirely free from the 
'blight' of protection, and in the almost perfect enjoy- 
ment of that which is regarded by the Union among 
the first of blessings, free trade ! 

" As a natural consequence, the power to pay for 
foreign merchandize passed away, and the consump- 
tion which, in 1817 and 1818, had averaged ninety 
millions, fell in the five years from 1720 to 1824 both 



130 , THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

inclusive, to an average of fifty millions ; and yet, 
small as was this amount, a constant drain of the little 
specie that was in the country was required to pay 
for it, as is shown by the following figures : 



1820 21 


Excess Imports. 


Excess Exports. 
$2,413,169. 
7,440,334. 
1,275,091. 


1821 22 




1822 23 




15^95? 94 


$1,365,283. 








$1,365,283. 


$11,128,594. 
1,365,283. 



Balance ::;::: $9,763,311. 

^'We have here an excess export of nearly ten mil- 
lions, and if to this be added, for wear and tear, for 
loss, and for consumption in the arts, only a million 
and a half a year, we have, in the short period of four 
years, a diminution of the precious metals in the 
country amounting to no 'less than sixteen millions, 
and yet the whole quantity had been estimated in 1818 
at about thirty millions. Under such circumstances, 
we need feel no surprise that sherifi''s sales were nu- 
merous — that the rich were made richer and the poor 
poorer — nor that the latter, in the effort to avoid ruin, 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 131 

should in many of the States, have invoked the inter- 
vention of the Legislature for the passage of stay-laws^ 
by which the sales of property were prohibited except 
under such circumstances as placed the creditor almost 
entirely at the mercy of the debtor. Such laws, as we 
shall have occasion to show, have always, thus far fol- 
lowed in the wake of free trade. 

" As a consequence of all this, the revenue fell ofif 
greatly, and new loans were required for the expenses 
of government. The amount of debt contracted in 
this free trade period was no less than thirteen millions, 
and this for a support of government in a time of pro- 
found peace, when the total expenditure, excluding 
that on account of the public debt, was, in some of the 
years under ten millions, and averaged only twelve 
millions. 

" Protection had delivered over to free trade a coun- 
try in a state of high prosperity, with an overflowing 
revenue, and diminishing national debt. Six years of 
free trade, however, were sufiicient to change the scene, 
and to present to the world a ruined people ; a declin- 
ing commerce, requiring a steady export of specie to 
pay the balance of trade ; an exhausted treasury, and 
an increased national debt." 



CHAPTER VIIL 

WHAT FORETGN EVIPOSTUEE IN COIVIIVIEECE HAS DONE 
FOR THIS COUNTRY. 

(continued.) 

We have shown that the war of 1812, by excluding 
British manufactures from this country, acted in the 
same way as a protective tariff, teaching the people 
the value of their own resources, and compelling them 
to establish manufactures of their own. To use the 
language of the authority last quoted, 

" We have shown that soon after the war of 1812, 
protection had handed the country over to the guar- 
dianship of free trade, in a state of high prosperity, 
and that it had required but six years of this latter 
(132) 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 133 

government to produce the almost total destruction of 
the manufactures of the country. We have also 
shown that this had been accompanied by so great a 
diminution of the power to pay for foreign merchan- 
dize as to compel the Treasury to have resorted to 
loans to enable it to meet the current demands upon 
it, and that, too, in a period of profound peace ! This 
state of things it was that caused the passage of the 
act of 1824, the first tariff act framed especially with 
reference to protection. It was very imperfect, and 
it required, of course, time to make itself felt ; and the 
drain of specie continued throughout the fiscal year of 
its passage, the exports in that year having exceeded 
the imports by more than two and a half millions of 
dollars. In the following year, however, a change was 
produced, and the imports of the four succeeding years 
exceeded the exports by about four millions of dollars. 
It was small in amount, but considerable in its efiect, 
for in place of an excess export of two millions a year, 
there was obtained an excess import of one, making a 
difference of three millions a year. The people be- 
came again able to pay for foreign merchandize, and 
the revenue, which for five years had averaged only 
eighteen millions, rose to an average of twenty-four 

12 



134 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

millions. The Treasury ceased to have occasion to 
resort to loans, and the payments on account of the 
public debt in the three years ending in 1828, averaged 
eleven millions a year, with large diminution in the 
amount of principal. 

" Such were the results of the very imperfect mea- 
sure of 1824, and by them its friends were encouraged 
to the far more perfect act of 1828, the first really and 
thoroughly protective tariff ever given to the country. 
Under it there was a rapid increase in the supply of 
gold and silver, the imports of the five years that fol- 
lowed its passage, having exceeded the exports by 
eleven millions of dollars, or about as much as the ex- 
ports had exceeded the imports in the free trade period. 
The value of domestic exports now grew rapidly, and 
presented a striking contrast with the facts of that 
period in which the community had enjoyed the bless- 
ings of free trade ; as is shows by the following figui'es : 

1821, $43,671,000 1829, 65,700,000. 

1822, 49,874,000 1830, 59,462,000. 

1823, 47,155,000 1831, 61,277,000. 

1824, 53,649,000 1832, 63,137,000. 



Total, $194,349,000 239,576,000. 

Average, 48,587,000 59,894,000. 



i 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 135 

"As a consequence of the increased ability to pay 
for foreign merchandize, the revenue grew rapidly, 
each year in succession greater than its predecessor^ 
thus proving how steadily the people were improving 
in their condition, though subjected to what the Union 
is pleased to style ' the blight' of protection. The year 
1828-29 gave twenty-jBve millions, and so did the fol- 
lowing one, but 1830-31 gave twenty-nine millions, 
and 1831-32 no less than thirty-two millions, or as 
much as had, under the free trade system, been ob- 
tained from the two years ending in September, 1821. 
The payments on account of the public debt rose to 
seventeen millions in 1832, and left at the close of 
that year so small an amount unpaid, that it became 
necessary to establish entire freedom of trade in refe- 
rence to coffee, teas, wines, silks, and other articles 
that could not be, or, at least, were not, produced at 
home. The revenue, however, still increased, and the 
receipts of the Treasury for 1833-34 reached the then 
enormous amount of thirty-four millions, and thus pro- 
vided for the total extinction of the public debt, by the 
payment of the three per cents, all of which were held 
abroad, as had been a large portion of the other stocks 
that had been paid since the passage of the act of 



136 THE ENEMIES OE AMERICA UNMASKED. 

1824. That year had terminated the borrowings of 
the Treasury, and it had required but nine years of 
protection to bring about the final payment of the debts 
of the Eevolution, of the war of 1812, and of the free 
trade period from 1818 to 1824. 

^' Under free trade, as our readers have seen, the 
debt was increased, and, as much of it probably went 
abroad, our foreign debt grew, while we were at the 
same time exporting more gold and silver than we im- 
ported, to the extent of two and a half millions a year. 
In the ten years that followed the passage of the act 
of 1824, no debt was contracted, while the payments 
on account of principal and interest amounted to a 
hundred millions of dollars, by which our indebtedness 
to foreigners was diminished probably thirty millions, 
while the excess import of gold and silver exceeded 
thirty millions. Such was the ' blight' of protection. 

" As a consequence, there existed throughout the 
country a degree of prosperity that had never before 
been known, and such was the preparation that had 
been made by protection for delivering the people over 
to the enjoyment of the blessings of free trade, pro- 
mised them by the Compromise Act that came into 
existence at the close of 1833. By the provisions of 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 137 

that Act, one-tenth of the excess duty over twenty per 
cent., was to be reduced at that date — another tenth 
at the close of 1835 — another in each of the years 
1837 and 1839— and the balance in 1841 and 1842. 
The reduction was, as our readers perceive, very gra- 
dual, and scarcely to be felt before 1835, except in so 
far as it tended to prevent the extension of manufac- 
tures, that had gone on so rapidly from 1829 to 1833. 
This, however, was almost unfelt, for the rapid in- 
crease in the domestic market had greatly diminished 
the necessity for going abroad to sell either food or 
cotton, and had tended much towards raising the prices 
to be obtained for what was sent ; and thus the amount 
of exports, which had risen from fifty millions in 1828 
to seventy in 1833, grew in 1834, '35 and '36 to 
eighty-one, one hundred and one, and one hundred and 
six millions. Thus was free trade enabled to profit by 
the protection that had been granted from 1824 to '34. 
''Never before had the country presented such a 
reality of prosperity as existed in 1834, when the 
' blight' of protection was in part removed, and when 
the farmers and the planters of the country were 
handed over to the ' tender mercies' of the free traders. 
Upon that prosperity the latter traded for several 

12* 



138 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

years. The credit of the country was high, for we had 
done what had never before been done by any other 
nation, having paid off the national debt, and having 
to a great extent accomplished that object in the brief 
period that had elapsed since the passage of the pro- 
tective tariff of 1824 — and having in the same period 
rapidly and greatly increased our stock of the precious 
metals. Never before had free trade had so fair an 
opportunity for displaying its powers — for never before 
had any people enjoyed the same advantages that were 
then enjoyed by our own — and y.et, at the close of 
another period of seven years, we find it leaving a 
people hopelessly indebted abroad and broken down 
under demands for payment that could not be com- 
plied with, and a government deeply indebted, and 
without the means of supporting itself without the 
creation of further debt. 

" From 1829 to 1834, under protection, we had im- 
ported twenty-seven millions more gold and silver than 
we had exported, and had paid a vast amount of fo- 
reign debt. From 1839 to 1842, under free trade, we 
exported eight millions more than we imported, and con- 
tracted, a hundred millions oi i^rivate foreign debt, and 
the amount of public debt contracted, most of which 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 139 

must have gone abroad, exceeded thirty-six millions. 
The power to pay for merchandize that had, in 1832- 
33, enabled us to consume to the extent of eighty-eight 
millions, and that continued to grow so long as the 
tariff continued to afford protection, until in 1834-35 
it reached one hundred and twenty-nine millions, de- 
clined, thereafter so much, that in three years ending 
in 1842 it averaged only ninety-six millions. In 
the last of these years it was only eighty-eight milions, 
with steady tendency to still farther decline, as the 
increasing demands for specie to pay the balance 
between exports and imports tended steadily to destroy 
all confidence between man and man, and confidence 
in the present or future value of property. Banks 
were every where in a state of suspension, and govern- 
ments in a state of repudiation. The Federal govern- 
ment was driven to the use of an irredeemable paper 
currency, and even with that, found itself so totally 
unable to meet the demands upon it, that the Presi- 
dent himself was unable to obtain his salary at the 
Treasury, and forced to seek accommodation from the 
neighboring brokers. 

The domestic market for food and cotton had been 
destroyed, and, with the increasing necessity for do- 



140 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

pendence on foreign markets, there had been a decline 
of prices so great that it rei^uired almost twice the 
quantity that would have sufficed six years before to 
pay the same amount of debt. Cotton fell to five and 
nine cents ; pork and beef to eight dollars a barrel ; 
wheat to one dollar and a quarter a bushel, and hams, 
lard and butter to from six to seven and a half a pound. 
The farmers and planters were unable to pay their 
debts, and now, as before in free trade times, stay- 
laws were required to protect the debtor against his 
creditor. Sheriffs' sales were universal, where such 
protection was not afforded. Merchants and manufac- 
tures were every where ruined, and laborers and arti- 
sans of every kind, by hundreds of thousands, were 
unable to sell their labor, and consequently unable to 
procure food for their families or themselves. 

" Free trade had delivered the country up to protec- 
tion in 1824, with a commerce requiring a steady ex- 
port of specie, and producing a steady decline of credit 
within and without its limits — and protection had ac- 
cepted the gift. Ten years after, the latter was called 
upon to resign her charge, and that which she did re- 
sign was a country in the highest prosperity. Only 
eight years afterwards free trade had dissipated her 



, FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 141 

great inlieritancej and had nothing to transfer but a 
country overwhelmed with debt — a treasury bankrupt, 
and seeking every where for loans at the highest rate 
of interest — a commerce ruined — and a people dis- 
graced and beggared." 

^' This was the termination of the second period dur- 
ing which the opposite effects of protection in enrich- 
ing the country, and British free trade in impoverish- 
ing it were respectively exhibited. One would 
naturally suppose that two such lessons might have 
sufficed for us ; and that we might have learned wisdom 
from experience. But foreign influence is strong in 
this country, because it works under ground, in secret. 
British influence in particular is cunning and unscru- 
pulous. The British aristocracy are veterans in diplo- 
matic craft. Their diplomastists are trained to their 
business, while ours are all green hands ; those we have 
abroad now, particularly green. The British over- 
reach us in all treaties, especially reciprocity treaties. 

''Besides this, the British manufacturers understand 
their own interest, and are willing to spend money for 
the purpose of forcing their system of free trade on 
foreign nations. They raised a fund of half a million 
of dollars ostensibly to diffuse information in the United 



142 



THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 



States on the advantages of free trade, — really to 
bribe presses and Legislatures. How successfully it 
was employed, will appear in what is now to be said 
respecting the third and last period of British free trade 
as applied to this country. 



CHAPTER XI. 

WHAT FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE HAS DONE 
FOR THIS COUNTRY. 

(continued.) 

We are anxious that our readers should be possessed 
of the whole course of facts in connection with the 
free trade imposture of Great Britain, It is by far 
the most baneful and destructive form of foreign influ- 
ence under which Americans suflfer. It is the most 
formidable evil which we have to eradicate before 
Americans can really govern America. To meet and 
conquer and utterly destroy it is the first duty of true- 
hearted, patriotic American citizens. But to do this, 

(143) 



144 . THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

"we must first fully understand what it is and how it 
works. 

In order to bring down its history to the present 
day, we again have recourse to the language of the 
able writer last quoted, where he describes the third 
period of the opposite effects of protection to Ameri- 
can industry on the one hand, and British free trade 
on the other. He says : 

" Free trade had received the country from the hands 
of protection, with money flowing in from all quarters 
— no foreign debt — credit high abroad and at home — 
and prosperity universal throughout the land. Seven 
years later, in 1842, when called upon to surrender 
the control of affairs, it had to deliver up a country 
from which money was steadily flowing — with an im- 
mense foreign debt — with a bankrupt government — 
with credit annihilated at home and abroad — with a 
people unable to sell their labor for what was required 
for the purchase of food and clothing — and with a 
whole farming and planting interest, compelled to ac- 
cept prices less by fifty per cent, than they had ob- 
tained but a few years before, when a vast domestic 
market had so largely diminished the necessity for de- 
pending on foreign ones. 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 145 

'' Under such circumstances it was that protection 
was called upon again to administer the affairs of go- 
vernment, and administer them she did in such a man- 
ner as speedily to dissipate the clouds by which the 
nation was every where surrounded. Her advent to 
power was followed by effects that seem now, when we 
look back to them, to have been almost magical. For 
a commerce with foreign nations that had required a 
constant export of the precious metals, she substituted 
one that gave us, in less than five years, an excess im- 
port of nearly forty millions, by help of which credit 
was every where speedily restored. The Federal go- 
vernment was at once enabled to effect loans, which 
before it could not do ; but the rapidly increasing re- 
venue, resulting from the growing power to consume 
foreign merchandize, speedily removed all necessity 
for borrowing money, either abroad or at home. State 
governments passed from a state of repudiation to one 
of the highest credit. Mills, factories, and furnaces, 
were again opened, and labor was in demand, and once 
again prosperity reigned throughout the land — and 
such prosperity as it had never known except in the 
closing years of the protective system established by 
the laws of 1824 and 1828. 

13 



146 ' THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA rx:.IASKED. 

" How wonderful were the efiects of tlie tariff of 
1842 will be seen upon the perusal of the following 
brief statement of facts. In 1842. the quantity of 
iron produced in the country but little exceeded two 
hundred thousand tons. By 1846 it had grown to an 
amount exceedinc^ ei^ht hundred thousand tons. In 
1842 the coal sent to market was but one million two 
hundred and fifty thousand tons. In 1S47 it exceeded 
three millions. The cotton and woollen manufactures, 
and manufactures of every kind, indeed, grew with 
great rapidity, and thus was made every where a de- 
mand for food, cotton, wool, tobacco, and all other 
products of the field, the consequences of which were 
seen in the fact that prices every where rose — that 
money became every where abundant — that farmers, 
and property holders generally, were enabled to pay 
ofiF their morto^a^^es — that sherifi's' sales almost ceased — 
and that the rich ceased to be made richer at the ex- 
pense of those who were poor. 

" Great, however, as was the change effected, it had 
but commenced when the democracy in Congress, 
elected as the friends of ' Polk, Dallas, and the tariff 
of 1842,' determined upon a change of policy. The 
domestic market had been, in a oi*eat decree, annihi- 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 147 

lated by the closing of mIneSj mills, furnaces, and ma- 
chine shops, and time was required to get them once 
again in motion — to collect together again the hands 
that, under free trade, had been dispersed to the four 
winds of Heaven — and to open or build new ones. All 
these things had been doing, and were being done, 
when at once protection was abolished, and the coun- 
try was again handed over to the government of free 
trade. 

" For a time, as had been the case in the years that 
followed the passage of the Compromise tariif of 1833, 
the new system was enabled to trade upon the pros- 
perity that had been produced by the one it had sup- 
planted. Its effects, however, soon began to exhibit 
themselves in the expulsion of the precious metals that 
had been imported in the previous period, the three 
years ending 1849-50, exhibiting an export greater 
than the import by thirteen millions of dollars. If to 
this be added but little more than two millions a year 
for wear and tear, loss, and consumption in the arts, 
we have twenty millions less in the country than were 
to be found here in 1847. Large as was this sum, it 
would have been quadrupled but for the fact that, in- 
stead of paying for our imports, as we had done from 



148 . THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

1842 to 1847, we gave bonds for them, and to an 
amount not less probably than a hundred millions of 
dollars, requiring six millions a year for the payment 
of interest thereon. Merchandize of every kind flowed 
in, and gold and silver flowed out, and the consequences 
were seen in the stoppage of mills, mines, furnaces, 
machine shops, and factories of every description, and 
thus, as early as 1850, did we obtain evidence of the 
fact that free trade and prosperity never travel in com- 
pany with each other. The former had broken down 
the country in the period from 1818 to 1824 — again 
in that from 1835 to 1842 — and now, again, it was 
producing e0*ects precisely similar, short as had been 
its hold on power. 

" California, gold however, was, then discovered, 
and thus was the downward movement temporarily 
arrested. In the first years a part of it remained 
among ourselves, producing every where a demand 
for labor, and power to pay for its products, while the 
demand for miners abroad to go to California and 
Australia, tended greatly to raise the prices of foreign 
coal, lead, iron, and machinery of every description, 
and thus to enable our own people to work to some ad- 
vantage. We, therefore, opened mines, and built fur- 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 149 

tiaces and mills, and for a time there was an appear- 
ance of prosperity that by many was supposed likely 
to be permanent, and to furnishes evidence that pro- 
tection was no longer needed — that it had become an 
^ obsolete idea,' and that, to use the words of the Union 
it was a 'blight/ These men had, however, not 
studied the working of a system which looks to allow- 
ing the farmers and planters of the West but a single 
market in which to sell their food and their wool, and 
in which to purchase the cloth and the iron they re- 
quire to consume — the system called free trade, and 
which looks to giving the people of Manchester and 
Birmingham a monopoly of the manufacturing machi- 
nery of the world. It is one that has ruined every 
country that has submitted to it, and that has ruined 
us whenever we have ceased to guard ourselves against 
it by eflScient protection to our farmers and planters 
in their efforts to bring the spindle, the loom and the 
hammer to take their natural places by the side of the 
plough and the harrow. 

" In the past five years California has supplied the 
world with more than two hundred millions of gold, 
most of which, had we smelted our own iron and made 
our own cloth, and had the makers of iron and cloth 

13* 



150 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

consumed our own food, would have remained amono^ 
ourselves, gi^^ng life to trade, and stimulating pro- 
duction in every part of the country. Instead of that, 
however, we have found ourselves forced to consume 
foreign cloth and foreign iron, representing almost 
entirely the food of Germany and Russia, and have 
not only been compelled to export a hundred and fifty 
millions of gold, but to send with it a hundred, if not 
over a hundred and fifty millions of bonds, so that our 
foreign debt now requires probably twenty millions of 
gold for the payment of its annual interest. We have 
thus exhausted our credit, and now present to the 
world the extraordinary spectacle of a community 
owning one of the largest sources of supply for money 
in which money cannot be borrowed except at twice, 
thrice, quadruple, or even quintriple the usual rate of 
interest. As a consequence of this, the makers of 
railroads — men who have largely contributed to the 
advance of the country — find themselves ruined. The 
owners of mills, furnaces, and mines, are being ruined, 
and from day to day we have to record the stoppage 
of some of the most important establishments of the 
country. Merchants are being ruined, for the people 
of the interior cannot pay their debts, and they, them- 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 151 

selves, cannot long continue to pay the usurious inte- 
rest that is now demanded. Banks are every where 
failing and credit is dying out, while money is every 
where being hoarded, and thus rendered useless to the 
community. Our streets, and those of all our towns 
and cities, are thronged with men who are unable to 
sell their labor, consequently unable to provide for 
their wives and children. The times of 1821 and of 
1842 have returned, or are rapidly returning again, 
as they always return after free trade has had a few 
years for the exhaustation of the stock in trade that is 
invariably bequeathed to her by protection. 

^' The latter is, we are told a 'blight;' but the 
people might well desire always to be so blighted. It 
carried us through the war of 1812, and left us at its 
close in not only a sound and healthy, but highly pros- 
perous condition. It redeemed us from the depres- 
sion consequent upon the free trade measures pursued 
from 1818 to 1824. It redeemed us from the depth 
of poverty, discredit and despondency into which free 
trade had sunk us in 1842. It is ready now at once 
to restore credit, and confidence among our people — 
to give life to trade, and to find employment for the 



152 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

thousands and hundreds of thousands that are now 
unemployed. 

" Free trade, on the contrary is, as we are assured 
a blessing ; but it is one of those from which we well 
might pray to be delivered. It found us prosperous in 
1818, and it ruined us by 1823. It found us yet more 
prosperous in 1847, and it has almost ruined us by 
1850 ; and now, in spite of the hundreds of millions 
of California gold, we find ourselves, at the close of 
the eight years of the tarifi" of 1846, surrounded every 
where by evidences of approaching ruin, even where 
the ruin has not already been fully consummated." 

The following summary history of protection and 
free trade in this country, during the last forty years, 
we clip from a New York paper. It is brief, but full 
of instruction. 

Protection died in 1818, bequeathing to British free 
trade a trade that gave an excess impo7^t of specie — a 
people among whom there existed great prosperity — a 
large public revenue — and a rapidly diminishing public 
debt. 

British free trade died in 1824, bequeathing to pro- 
tection free trade a trade that gave an excess export 
of specie — a people more prosperous than any that had 



FOEEIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 153 

ever then been known — a revenue so great that it had 
been rendered necessary to emancipate from duty tea, 
coffee, and many other articles that we did not pro- 
duce — and a treasury free from all charge on account 
of public debt. 

British free trade died in 1842, bequeathing to pro- 
tection a trade that gave an excess export of specie — a 
people ruined, and their Governments in a state of 
repudiation — a public Treasury bankrupt, and begging 
every where for loans at the highest rate of interest — 
a revenue collected and disbursed in irredeemable 
paper money — and a very large foreign debt. 

Protection died in 1847, bequeathing to British free 
trade a trade that gave an excess import of specie — a 
highly prosperous people — State Governments restored 
to credit — a rapidly growing commerce — a large public 
revenue — and a declining foreign debt. 

British free trade has next to make its will, having 
nothing to bequeath but a trade that drains us of our 
specie — a people rapidly passing towards ruin — a de- 
dining commerce — and a foreign debt requiring for 
the payment of its mere interest at least twenty mil- 
lions of dollars a year. 



CHAPTER XIL 

WHAT FOREIGN I:MP0STURE IN COMMERCE HAS DONE 
FOR THIS COUNTRY. 

(CONTI.\UED.) 

Before going into details to show the effect of 
British free trade in reducing the industry of our coun- 
try to its present prostrate and suffering condition, we 
will transcribe the concluding remarks of the authority 
last quoted, in which several very important particu- 
lars of the present condition of the country, too gene- 
rally overlooked, are brought distinctly into view ; and 
the necessity of putting an end to British influence on 
our affairs very forcibly argued. 

" The Washington Union tells its readers that, 
Snthout fear of successful contradiction,' it may as- 
(154) 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 155 

sert ' tHat the tariff of 1846 has no more to do with 
the commercial revulsion following upon this cause, 
than the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska bill. 
These crises in commerce depend/ it says, ^altogether 
upon miscalculation, resulting from unforeseen changes 
in the financial and productive condition of the trading 
and agricultural world, with which we are indissolubly 
connected by the bonds of commerce.' Such being 
the case, may we beg it to explain why it is that com- 
mercial revulsions always follow in the wake of free 
trade, and never in that of protection ? Up to that 
time the country had never experienced a revulsion so 
serious as that which occurred in the six years that 
intervened between the protective tariff of 1818 and 
1823. Serious, however, as was that one, it was ex- 
ceeded in its severity by the revulsion of 1841-42. 
Being now at the outset of another, the severity of 
which has, as we fear, yet to be experienced — and this, 
after eight years of free trade — we may, as it seems 
to us, consider commercial revulsions, by help of which 
the poor are made poorer and the rich enriched, one 
of the regular forms of free trade with those countries 
with which, as we are here told, we are ' indissolubly 
connected by the bonds of commerce.' Will the U7iion 



156 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

be SO kind as to give us any reasons for believing that 
such must not be the case ? 

" Again. From the time when the tariff of 1824 
became operative and turned the tide of commerce so 
as to enable us to increase our stock of the precious 
metalSj there were in the long period of ten years, no 
revulsions except the temporary one produced in 1832 
by the removal of the deposits from the United States 
Bank. During that long period we went on steadily 
paying off our debts in Europe, and increasing our 
stock of the precious metals — and thereby securing 
ourselves against the possibility of future revulsions. 
And yet no sooner had free trade exhausted the stock 
in trade that protection had secured, than we found 
ourselves involved in difficulty, — our banks suspended, 
our government reduced to borrow money, and our 
people forced to beg their bread because of inability 
to sell their labor. Will the Union tell us if this was 
not so ? 

'' Further : — from 1842 to 1847 we had no revul- 
sions. Every thing went on smoothly, and money 
became from day to day more abundant, as labor be- 
came from day to day more in demand, and as the 
power of production increased. Severe as was the 



« 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 157 

English revulsion of 1846-48, we were wholly un- 
touched by it, because for the five years that had then 
elapsed, the policy of the country had looked to 
diminishing, instead of increasing, our dependence on 
foreigners — to making a market at home for food and 
cotton — to diminishing, not increasing our foreign 
debt — and to strengthening, instead of weakening, the 
nation. When the Union shall be enabled to find in 
our history a period when protection has given us com- 
mercial revulsions, with their attendant panics and 
hoarding money — or a period of free trade that has 
not so resulted — it will, we think, be time for it to re- 
peat the assertion contained in the above extract, but 
not until then. 

" The difficulty under which we now labor is, that 
our markets are flooded with foreign manufactures, 
while our own people are idle, the necessary conse- 
quence of which is, that the balance of trade is stead- 
ily against us, requiring a constant export of specie to 
pay the diJBFerence — and that, too, in spite of the fact 
that we have for years past been building up a great 
foreign debt, now requiring for the payment of its in- 
terest alone^ not less than twenty millions of dollars a 

year. This matter of interest is steadily kept out of 

14 



158 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

sight by the Secretary of the Treasury, by the Presi- 
dent, and by the free trade journals, and yet it consti- 
tutes the first claim upon our exports — and is so much 
to be added to the balance that exhibits itself on the 
face of the treasury statements. The value of imports 
exclusive of specie, in the year 1852-53, was two 
hundred and sixty-four millions, and that of the exports, 
also exclusive of specie, only two hundred and two 
millions, leaving an adverse balance of sixty-two mil- 
lions, to which remained to be added not less than 
eighteen millions for the payment of interest, making 
a total of eighty millions, in discharge of which we 
sent twenty-seven millions of gold, and some thirty or 
forty millions of bonds representing debts that have 
yet to be paid. In the last fiscal year, the adverse 
balance was about forty-five millions, to which has 
to be added twenty millions for the payment of 
interest, making a total of sixty -five millions, in dis- 
charge of which we sent thirty-eight millions, to which 
has to be added twenty millions for the payment of 
sixty-five millions, in discharge of which we sent thirty 
eight millions of gold, and probably four and twenty- 
millions of bonds, the interest upon which has to be 
paid in this, the next, and every suceeding year, until 



FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 159 

the principal shall be discharged. All this being well 
known to the President, to the Secretary, to the 
Union, and to its kindred journals, it may be regarded 
as striking evidence of their conviction of the correct- 
ness of their views that they all so studiously avoid 
reference to the vast mass of public debt that is being 
created J or to the enormous amount of interest required 
to be paid, and constituting the first offset against 
the food and cotton we export, 

'' This perpetual drain of specie is the cause of all 
our present difficulties, and it is, itself a consequence 
of the system which looks to giving Great Britain a 
monopoly of the manufacturing machinery of the world. 
Whenever it has prevailed among us we have been 
forced to export specie and bonds — as in the period 
from 1818 to 1824— from 1838 to 1842— and from 
1848 to the present time ; and therefore it is that it 
has always been followed as it now is attended by dis- 
trust among the banks and merchants, by hoarding of 
specie, and by ruin to the community. 

'' Credit is rapidly declining among us, and hoarding 
is as rapidly increasing, and both must go on until the 
point of ruin shall be reached, unless we have a change 
of policy, tending to prevent the drain that now exists. 



160 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

The time has come, as we are told by the Union, for 
a change ; but in what direction ? Towards the 
adoption of a policy that shall tend to set our people 
to work to produce the things we now import, and thus 
diminish the necessity for exporting gold ? Certainly 
not. That would be undemocratic^ for it would tend 
to diminish distress among the poor, and lower the 
rates of interest now obtained by the rich. The change 
proposed is towards the further closing of mills, facto- 
ries, and furnaces ; the further discharge of workmen ; 
the further dependance on Europe for a market in 
which to sell all we produce and buy all we need to 
consume ; the further manufacture of bonds ; and the 
further export of coin — all of which must inevitably 
produce further decline of confidence and further 
hoarding of the precious metals. 

" That such is the tendency of the measures pro- 
posed by the dominant party in Congress is well known 
to our readers, and their adoption can have no other 
effect than that of stopping more mills, more furnaces, 
and more roads — the work in, or upon, which will 
never again be resumed until we shall have a change 
of policy in the opposite direction — and this is nearly 
as true of the measure proposed by the Secretary of 



FOREiaN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. 161 

the Treasury, as by that of the Committee of Ways and 
Means. Neither of these will do any thing to restore 
confidence, or to give employment to our people, or 
food to their now starving wives and children. If, how- 
ever, they desire to know what will do so, we will tell 
them. Let them repeal the act of 1846 and replace 
that of 1842 as the law of the land, and confidence will 
then, at once, be restored ; for all will see that the 
day for exporting bonds and specie has come to an end. 
Money will then again become abundant and cheap. 
Hoarding will then cease, for all will see that property 
is bound to rise in value as our people become from 
day to day more enabled to sell their labor. Mills, 
factories, and furnaces, will then again be opened, and 
new ones will be built, making demand every where 
for laborers and mechanics, and giving them every 
where the means to purchase food and clothing, which 
now they have not. Roads that are now suspended 
will be resumed, and new ones will be made, for we 
shall then consume the iron made at home by help of 
our own food and clothing, instead of, as now, the iron 
of Britain made by the help of the food of Germany 
and of Russia. All will then again be prosperity, and 
merchants, manufacturers, and land owners, laborers, 

14* 



162 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

mechanics, will be enabled once again to rejoice in the 
adoption of a system that looks to the promoting the 
interests of the American laborer, and not exclusively 
those of the foreign manufacturer and trader. The 
Administration that is represented abroad by Mr. Bel- 
mont — lieutenant of the great money-changers of our 
day — is, however, as we greatly fear, little likely to 
adopt any measures tending to restore confidence or 
to reduce the price of money. For all such we must 
wait for another set of men. The free trade of 1818 
to 1824 gave us Adams and the tariff of 1828 ; that 
of 1835 to 1840 gave us Harrison and the tariff of 
1842 ; and that now existing is bound to give us an 
American President in 1856, when, if not before, we 
shall certainly see a return to that policy which gave 
us the universal prosperity of 1834 and 1846/' 



CHAPTER XIII. 

EXAMPLES OF THE PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IM- 
POSTURE ON AMERICAN INDUSTRY. 

(continued.) 

A READER disposed to cavil at our argument might 
say that it is easy to make assertions without regard 
to the depression at present suflfered by the industrial 
classes in our country ; and he might challenge the 
proof. As we are disposed to give chapter and verse, 
facts and statistics for whatever we assert, we now pro- 
ceed to copy from the New York Tribune, of Decem- 
ber 18th, 1854, a detailed report of the depression of 
industry in that city and its vicinity, made by the re- 
porter of the paper. Of course it is necessarily ex- 
tremely imperfect, and does not cover the whole or 

(163) 



164 THE ENEMIES OP AMERICA UNMASKED. 

even half the ground ; but it exhibits enough to show 
that our argument rests upon a broad basis of indis- 
putable facts : 

Iron Works, — The iron business in this city is very 
much depressed, and large numbers of workmen are 
destitute of employment. In a recent tour through 
the foundries and machine-shops, we learned that upon 
the average not more than one half the men are now 
employed, and the anticipations of the future hold out 
still gloomier prospects. In Brooklyn, some five 
hundred men in this business have been recently 
thrown out of employment, and about a like number 
are now at work — many of them, however, upon half- 
time. One shop that employs a large number of hands 
has discharged a quarter of them and put the rest on 
three-quarters time, and expects to be compelled to 
discharge still more. 

Messrs. Stillman, Allen, & Co., of the Novelty 
Works, under date of the 15th inst., write us concern- 
ing the iron trade : '' We consider the business at pre- 
sent in a very depressed condition. We have now 
about twenty-five per cent, fewer men in our employ 
than at the same season last year. Wages are falling, 
but are yet higher than at this time last year ; the 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 165 

rise in the mean time having been considerable. It is 
possible for us to say more of the prospect before us, 
than that it is involved in uncertainty." 

Printing, — Experienced men say that they have 
not known so great a depression of the Printing busi- 
ness for many years. Many of the leading offices 
have discharged two-thirds of their hands, and have 
reduced the remainder to two-thirds of a day's work. 
A large number of journeymen printers have left the 
city — others are working a day or two in the week 
as substitutes in the offices of the daily journals ; but 
many more are totally destitute of work. The scale 
of prices, as established by the Union, has not been 
materially departed from as yet, that we can learn, 
although employers say that a considerable reduction 
must take place unless business improves, and that 
right speedily. 

Stereotypers. — This business, as a consequence, ex- 
hibits much the same state of depression as pervades 
that of Printing. At this time last year, it was im- 
possible to obtain sufficient assistance to get out the 
works in progress. Now, not more than one-third of 
the Stereotypers are employed. 

Type Founders, — In this branch scarcely any thing 



IGG THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

is doing. We are informed that one house alone in 
this cit J, for the past month, showed a decline of busi- 
ness to the extent of some forty thousand pounds of 
type, as compared with the same period of last year. 

Boolx-Binding, — In the same category this branch 
of book-making may be classed. At a recent meeting 
of the Book-binder's Association it was stated that 
the business had never been worse. The Tract So- 
ciety, Bible Society, Methodist Book Concern, Har- 
per's, and other establishments had either discharged 
a number of their hands or reduced their hours of 
labor. Of the thousand men engaged in this branch 
of industry between two and three hundred are now 
out of work. 

Building. — The Builders have scarcely any thing 
under way. Many of the Masons, Bricklayers, Car- 
penters, Plumbers, and others have left the city, to 
seek employment elsewhere. A large contracting 
Mason estimated the quantity of business now doing 
in his profession at about one-eighth of that of the 
same period in 1853. He says that not more than 
one thousand of the five to seven thousand usually em- 
ployed in New York are now at work. Workmen, 
who last year commanded two dollars per day, can 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 167 

now be hired upon any street corner for one dollar 
and fifty cents per day ; and Laborers, who then com- 
manded ten to twelve shillings, are fortunate now if 
employed at one dollar a day. 

House-carpenters are among the principal sufi'erers. 
Many of the small employers have closed their shops ; 
the more extensive master carpenters have greatly re- 
duced the number of their hands, and curtailed the 
hours of labor of those yet at work. We have not heard 
that wages have been reduced in this branch. It is 
scarcely necessary to speak of the condition of the 
ship-yards, as some weeks since we gave an extended 
statement of their business. The majority of the ope- 
rative ship-carpenters in this city, numbering many 
hundreds of men, are now out of employment, and the 
number deprived of labor daily augments, by the com- 
pletion of the work in progress. At a recent meeting 
of the ship-owners and agents in this city, it was re- 
solved to reduce the wages of ship-carpenters from 
three dollars to two dollars and fifty cents per day. It 
has been estimated that at least one half of the ship- 
carpenters in New York are unemployed. In the nine 
ship-yards of Williamsburgh and Greenpoint, employ- 
ing, on the average, in good seasons, an aggregate of 



168 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

one thousand persons, only two hundred and thirty- 
seven men are now at work. 

The depression of this branch of industry necessa- 
rily affects large numbers of operatives in other pro- 
fessions, as rope-makers, block-makers, curriers, rig- 
gers, and a host of others. 

The Plasterers are no better off than the House- 
carpenters. Although this branch of labor does not 
employ near so many persons as the other, yet in pro- 
portion, the number unemployed is equally great. The 
head of an extensive firm in the Plastering business 
assures us that not more than one-sixth, or about two 
hundred men, are now at work. Many of these can 
not now command more than ten shillings a day, where 
twelve months ago they readily obtained fifteen. 

Of the fifteen hundred Plumbers, it is estimated 
that not more than one-half are employed. We could 
not hear of any reduction of the wages, although in 
many shops the hours of labor have been reduced. 

Other Trades, — The Brass-founders and Brass-fin- 
ishers share in the general depression. Nearly all the 
employers have reduced the hours of labor to one-half. 

With the tanners and Morocco-finishers no marked 
change has taken place, that we could hear of. 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 169 

Umhrella Makers, — This business shares in the ge- 
neral depression. We were informed by one manu- 
facturer, that where he employed three hundred per- 
sons last year, there are now only forty. 

Hatters. — Not more than thirty per cent, of the 
average force in this business is now employed. Wages 
have not been affected as yet, nor have the hours of 
labor been abridged with those who are at work. 

Tailors, — About one-half of the Tailors in New 
York are out of employment. A leading wholesale 
manufacturer of Clothing informs us that, next Sa- 
turday, at least one thousand persons who are now at 
work will be discharged. Wages have not been re- 
duced as yet. We are informed that from five to six 
thousand Tailors in this city (mostly females) do not 
know where to get the next job from. The prospects 
are dull in the extreme ; the wholesale trade is said 
to be dead. 

Dri/ Croods, — There has been a great falling off in 
the wholesale trade, estimated at sixty per cent. The 
retail trade is reviving, for a short time, on account 
of the holidays. There are some few exceptions — Stew- 
art, for example, with whom business has rarely been 
better. They say they have sold as many costly 

15 



170 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

dresses as ever. Stewart says women are more extra- 
vagant than in former years. He thinks the present 
stringency in the money market will cause a great de- 
cline in the amount of importations in the next spring, 
and a consequent increase in the consumption of home 
manufactures. 

We have received reports of a like tenor from the 
Jewelers, Piano-makers, Billiard-table-makers, Cabi- 
net-makers, Manufacturers of Hardware, Picture- 
frames, Looking-glasses, Clocks, and Artificial Flower- 
makers, and Boot and Shoemakers. All concur in 
stating that times were never worse with them ; many 
have discharged large numbers of work-people, and 
reduced the hours of labor of the others. 

The Soap and Candle-makers are said to have been 
less affected by the " hard times,'' than almost any 
other business, probably from the fact that the major 
part of the work in this trade is performed in the win- 
ter and spring months. 

Organ-builders are also exempt from the general 
depression, probably owing to the length of time for 
which orders are given ahead, and occupy to be com- 
pleted. 

It is well known that upon many of the steamships 



PEESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 171 

sailing from this port the wages of firemen and coal- 
passers have been reduced some twenty to twenty-five 
per cent, and a very strenuous efi'ort is being made to 
reduce the rates of compensation upon all of them. 

The Erie Railroad Company has reduced the wages 
of laborers employed in loading freight, and repairing 
the track, from one dollar to eighty cents per day, 
which is the rate of wages paid to the same class of 
hands last winter. It was deemed better to thus re- 
duce the amount of compensation than to throw any 
of the men entirely out of employment. It is not likely 
that the men will refuse to come into this arrangement, 
as to remain idle through the winter would be a ha- 
zardous experiment. 

From the same paper, we copy the following account 
of the depression of industrial interests in other parts 
of the country, as manifested previously to the 18th 
of December, 1854. Of course the situation of afi*airs 
has varied but little since. 

From different parts the prevailing cry of ''hard 
times'' is echoed and re-echoed far and near. 

In Detroit, Michigan, several hundred workers in 
iron have recently been thrown out of employment. 

In Buffalo, between three and four hundred men 



172 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

in the iron business have been thrown out of employ- 
ment. The Saratoga and Sackett's Harbor Railroad, 
after one hundred and fifty thousand dollars has been 
expended upon it, and debts to the amount of two 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars been contracted, has 
been discontinued, throwing out of work some five thou- 
sand laborers, who are said to be suffering greatly in 
the northern wilderness. The snow is upon them and 
it is feared that many, particularly women and children 
will die of cold and starvation. 

In New Jersey the same stagnation is apparent. 
The Burlington Gf-azette says : 

" A large proportion of the hands at Cooper's Roll- 
ing Mill, at Trenton, were discharged a few days 
since, in consequence of the proprietors turning their 
attention to another branch of iron work. On Satur- 
day last, a man fell down in the streets of Trenton 
from faintness and exhaustion caused by hunger. 
S^e had not tasted any thing for three days. At New- 
ark the manufacturers are complaining, and at Plain- 
field, where hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of 
clothing is annually made, there is but little doing. 
We understand that the shoe trade is also suffering. 
It is well known that at least one-tenth of the inhabi- 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREiaN IMPOSTURE. 173 

tants of our city is engaged in the manufacture of 
ladies' shoes, and that tens of thousands of dollars are 
paid out in the course of the year to binders and jour- 
neymen. Prices are lower, and work is less abundant 
than it was a few months since.'' 

Pennsylvania suffers no less than her s-ister States. 
The Reading Q-azette says : 

" The recent and unexpected reverse which has 
overtaken the iron trade — so prosperous during the 
last two years — is, we are sorry to say, having its 
effect upon the iron establishments in this country. 
We learn that the Lessport Iron Company, and the 
Messrs. Ecker, have countermanded orders for a con- 
siderable quantity of machinery which they intend to 
increase the productive capacity of their works, and 
are making preparations for a considerable reduction 
of their business, to meet the hard times which stare 
them in the face. We greatly fear that we shall shortly 
be compelled to notice the discharge of many work- 
men from our manufactories." 

In Philadelphia great numbers of workmen have 
been dismissed ; the Messrs. Norris alone, discharged 
six hundred from their locomotive works. 

15* 



174 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

TTie Grermantown Telegraphy speaking upon the 
same subject, adds : 

" Even in the iron business, in which the proprie- 
tors of some of the principal establishments were 
threatened with the crime of becoming millionaires in 
a few days, the tables are turned, and their burdens 
are greater than they can bear. Some of the largest 
have either failed, suspended work, or reduced the 
number of their workmen to one half. And their 
wages from twenty to twenty-five per cent. The result 
of this is, that thousands of first rate artisans are 
thrown out of work on approach of winter, with fami- 
lies depending upon them for support. But it is not 
only the workers in iron who suffer — in nearly all the 
manufacturing branches, trades, not sparing the mer- 
chant, who is a principal sufferer, the same condition 
of things exists. Even the printing business — -seldom 
sensibly effected by the times — is in a most depressed 
condition." 

The Telegraph asks, "What are the causes that 
produce these hard times ?" and replies ; 

" It is because we are great buyers abroad^ instead 
of being great buyers at home. We send all our money 



1 



I 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 175 

to Europe, to pay for goods that we should manufac- 
ture ourselves." 

The Wilmington Repuhlican says : 

" One hundred hands have been discharged by one 
establishment in that city, twenty by another, and a 
few by others. The difficulty of procuring funds to 
make payment is assigned as the reason for this cur- 
tailment of the number of workmen." 

" In Norristown, on Monday morning last, Messrs. 
Thomas, Carson & West reduced the wages of those in 
their employ twenty per cent. The Swede Iron Com- 
pany have also reduced the wages of their hands to a 
like amount." 

"Woodstock, Vermont, the firm of Daniel Taft & 
Sons, manufacturers of iron tools &c., have been com- 
pelled by the pressure of the times to stop payment. 
Their liabilities are stated at forty thousand dollars, 
and their asserts must be much larger. At White 
River Junction, near Lebanon, Messrs. B. Latham & 
Co., iron founders and manufacturers of machinery, 
and also of cars and steam engines, have been com- 
pelled to close their establishment. The Rutland and 
Washington Railroad Company owe them one hundred 
thousand dollars which is unavailable, at least for the 



176 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

present. They employed between seventy five and a 
hundi^ed hands." 

In Massachusetts, afi'aii's wear no very promising 
aspect. Tlie Boston Traveller has the following : 

'• During the summer mechanics and day-laborers 
have commended their own prices, and it has been 
with difficulty that contractors and master workmen 
could get and keep sufficient workmen at any price. 
But for some weeks there has been a oreneral fallino: 
off in the demand for men, for the simple reason that 
there has been a falling off of orders for work. Some 
manufactories have been compelled to discharge large 
numbers of hands, so that where there have been hun- 
dreds employed during the summer there are now few 
or none but the foreman and the apprentices remain- 
ing ; and other establishments which have not dischar- 
their hands generally, have yet found it difficult to 
keep them employed. We understand, also, that in 
Worcester some of the large machine establishments, 
are rapidly decreasing the number of their hands, 
and also the number of hours during which they will 
employ those who remain." 

From Western Virginia, — A correspondent of T7ie 
Tribune, at Parkersburg sends us the following: 



II 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 177 

" The pressure for money has placed a bar for the 
further construction of North Western Virginia Rail- 
road, so important to the prosperity of this place and 
section of the country. Thirty days' notice,as required 
by their contracts, is being given to the contractors 
on the whole line, to cease work. This will prove ex- 
ceedingly disastrous to the poor laborers, who are 
thus suddenly deprived of the means of subsistence at 
this most inclement season. God pity them. The con- 
tractors can go on provided they will take one-half of 
their pay in the bonds of the Company. 

" Provisions are enormously high for this region. 
Less than eighteen months ago flour was sold at three 
dollars and seventy-five cents per barrel ; now it is 
eight dollars and a half, and all other things in pro- 
portion. It is as much as people can do to live at all.'' 

So much for the statements of the newspapers of 
December 1854. These are very significant facts. 
They are few in number, very " few and far between," 
compared with what might easily be accumulated by 
carefully examining a file of papers from all parts of 
the country. But they are sufiicient to show that the 
industry of the country has been suddenly struck with 
paralysis. 



178 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

If we inquire what is the immediate cause of this state 
of things, every one promptly answers, the scarcity of 
money. If we inquire why money is scarce, the answer 
is, that, under the free trade system the, importations 
for the last year were three hundred millions of dol- 
lars. Much of this has been paid for in promises to 
fay in the shape of Railroad bonds, state stocks, and 
other stocks ; but during the last half of the year these 
having become unsaleable abroad, the deficiency has 
been made up in gold and silver exported to Europe. 
This has diminished the specie basis of our own paper 
currency and greatly depreciated the value of stocks held 
in this country, thereby spreading alarm and panic 
throughout the country and causing capitalists to raise 
the rate of interest to double quadruple and even 
quintriple the legal rate, thereby sweeping off the 
profits of our business men; merchants and manufac- 
turers particularly ; but by no means sparing the 
farmers, who lose by the losses of their customers and 
the foreclosing of mortgages on their own lands. Those 
who are out of debt hoard coin, instead of leaving it 
in bank ; and as a result of all these circumstances 
money is scarce. There is no mistake about it. There 
is less coin in the country than there ought to be in a 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 179 

healthy condition of trade ; and it is rapidly being 
hoarded away from mere panic. 

Three hundred millions of dollars^ mostly spent in 
manufacturers which ought to be produced in this 
country, and, under a protective tariff, would have 
been produced here, is a large sum to be expended in 
producing national ruin and distress. This is the 
effect of foreign influence by which British free trade 
has placed a heavy burden on our shoulders — foreign 
influence applied to corrupt legislators and a venal 
press and producing the free trade tariff of 1846. 
California gold staved ofl* the ruin till the eighth year. 
But it has come at last with a vengeance. All peo- 
ple are inquiring for a remedy. Doubtless there is a 
remedy — an American remedy, not a foreign nostrum ; 
but an American medicine which will efi*ect a cure. 
But before proceeding to consider this point, we will 
glance for a few moments at the remedy which is seri- 
ously proposed by the foreigners who have settled 
among us. It is among the most remarkable of the 
signs of the times. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 

Under our present system of naturalization laws, ad- 
ministered as they generally are by corrupt politicians, 
foreigners, most of whom never were permitted to vote 
or hold office in their own countries, are allowed to 
vote here a few days after they are landed. The eflfect 
of this indulgence is exactly what might have been 
anticipated. Ignorant and presumptuous, they are 
not satisfied to adopt American views or learn the 
tendency of American institutions; but they bring 
forward all the exploded European heresies, and en- 
deavor to make them current here. They wish to in- 
struct us how to govern ourselves, and they preach 
(180) 



i 



THE FOREIGNEES' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 181 

for political doctrine Fourierism, agrarainism, and that 
particular form of red republicanism, which consists in 
overturning the foundations of society, and dividing 
the property acquired by the industrious among the 
idle and dissolute. 

In particular localities of this country, where these 
foreign adventurers happen to be numerous, they en- 
deavor to take the direction of political aflfairs entirely 
into their own hands, and where quiet voting or peace- 
able cheating at the polls wont answer the purpose, 
rioting and the bludgeon are resorted to. 

The city of New York is particularly unfortunate 
in this particular ; and it is one of the blackest signs 
of these dark times, that being our commercial metro- 
polis, it is the most un-Amei-ican city in the United 
States. Thousands upon thousands of foreigners ar- 
rive there almost every day, and great numbers of 
them remain in the city. There, Scroggs's from Bir- 
mingham and Manchester live by cheating the revenue 
of its dues. British merchants monopolize a great 
proportion of the commerce of the city, and aid with 
great alacrity in displaying to this country the bless- 
ings of British free trade. The Irish Catholics in 
the city are counted by tens of thousands. Germans 

16 



182 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

are so numerous that in some streets of the city, G er- 
man is the only language which one hears ; and French 
red republicans find in New York a forum for their 
declamations, and apparently hope to find a theatre 
for displaying their talents at overturning, or at least 
overawing governments and dictating the terms on 
which ouvriers shall be supported in the Parisian style. 

Recently, since by the aid of foreign influence and 
British free trade, the industrial classes of this coun- 
try have been thrown out of employ in great numbers, 
the foreigners of New York perforce have to suffer 
with the rest. Their distress is represented as being 
very great. Many thousands of them are out of em- 
ploy. They have held frequent meetings for the pur- 
pose of devising a remedy for the evils under which 
they are suffering ; and the remedy upon which they 
have finally fixed is marked by that impudence and 
audacity which is the too frequent characteristic of fo- 
reigners in this country. It is to demand from our 
municipal and national governments an appropriation 
of money and lands for their support. This is cool, 
to say the least ; and some of our readers may doubt 
the correctness of our assertion. 

In order to silence such doubters, we will give a 



THE FOREiaNERS' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 183 

specimen of the declarations of these foreigners, made 
through their mouth-pieces, at a public meeting held 
in New York, on the 15th of January, 1855. The 
proceedings are announced in the Herald^ of the 16th, 
under the following characteristic heading. 

FASHION AND FAMINE. 

EIGHT THOUSAND UNEMPLOYED WORKMEN IN FIFTH AVENUE. 

MONSTER MASS MEETINGS IN WASHINGTON PARADE 

GROUND AND THE PARK. 

PROCESSION OF THE UNEMPLOYED. 
WHAT THEIR SPEAKERS SAID. 

ADDRESSES RESOLUTIONS. 

&c., &c., &c. 

The report says, "A mass meeting of the unem- 
ployed workmen was announced to come off yesterday 
afternoon, at the Washington Parade Ground, at three 
o'clock. Long before the hour published vast crowds 
might be seen wending their way to the scene of the 
proposed meeting, and by the time they were called to 
order there could not have been less than five thousand 
persons in the Parade Ground and vicinity. 



184 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

Then follows the advertisement and the address de- 
livered by the chairman Mr. Ira B. Davis, in which 
the designs and demands of this mob of foreigners are 
set forth. AVe copy this address ; and desire the 
reader to take notice, that the charity of Xevr York is 
spurned, the opening of the citv, state, and national 
treasuries for their relief is demanded^ and in case of 
refusal intimations of riot and violence to ensue, are 
distinctly given. Here is the address. 

'• Fellow citizens — You have been called together 
this afternoon by the united action of the committee 
appointed at the late meeting at Hope Chapel, to- 
gether with the committee of conference composed of 
delegates from various movements that have been 
laborinoi; to devise means to relieve the crreat distress 
of the producing classes. It is well known to you 
that almost superhuman exertions have been and still 
are being made to assuage the sufferings of the desti- 
tute, and we feel grateful for the generosity that is 
manifested by those who have contributed, but we also 
know that the disease is too deeply seated to be healed 
by any temporary charity that may be extended. 
(Cheers.) We know that there are but slight induce- 
ments for capitalists to invest their money in trade, 



THE FOREiaNERS' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 185 

and therefore the charity that may be extended will 
fall far short of accomplishing the designs of the 
donors ; (cheers ;) and when they learn that notwith- 
standing their contributions the evil is not abated, but 
has daily and fearfully increased, and no prospect of 
trade reviving by private enterprise, they will become 
accustomed to the cry of the destitute, and, tired of 
contributing longer, their purse-strings will be tight- 
ened ; and when charity is no longer extended to 
those broken in spirit that accept of it now, their dis- 
tress will render them frantic; and in their wild 
despair they are more to be dreaded than those too 
proud to accept charity, but simply demand the oppor- 
tunity to labor. (Sensation.) In view of this melan- 
choly picture of distress, and at the great distance at 
which relief can be rationally expected from a reviving 
of trade through the ordinary channels, and the in- 
competency of any movement of charity to supply the 
wants of the unemployed ; and feeling assured that in 
this extremity it is not only just that we should de- 
mand of our governments of the city, state and nation, 
some extra exertions to repair the evils that have re- 
sulted from unwise legislation hitherto — (cheers) — 
under these circumstances, your committee have con- 

IG* 



186 - THE EXEMIE3 OF AMEHICA UXMASKED. 

eluded that the demand set forth in the memorial pre- 
sented to the Common Council bj the committee from 
Hope Chapelj was conceived in wisdom, and is deman- 
ded in justice. (Cheers.) The building upon the 
public lands of the city would furnish direct employ- 
ment to many thousands of mechanics and laborers, 
and by their being employed, with their wages they 
would be better enabled to support their families with 
the necessaries of life, and thus by the purchase of 
the products of other trades give a general stimulus to 
business, so that every class of citizens, laborers and 
traders, would share the benefit that would flow from 
this act. (Cheers.) And though the renting of these 
houses at cheap rents to those that would occupy them, 
and the necessary reduction of rents in other parts 
of the city, that would result from the building of 
these houses, yet the capitalists would not be so seri- 
ously affected as many of them fear ; for the general 
improvement of the condition of the people, and the 
rents from their buildings would greatly reduce the 
rate of taxation ; and if these property holders are not 
heavily taxed they cannot complain if they do not re- 
ceive such high rents, for it is the taxes they urge as 
the excuse for their demanding such heavy rents. 



THE EOREiaNERS' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 187 

(Cheers.) Yes, fellow citizens, the adoption of this 
policy by our city would reflect honor upon our city 
government, be a blessing not only to our own citizens 
but to the civilized world, for it would point out a 
more wise and equitable system than has hitherto been 
adopted. (Cheers.) And in this hour of distress will 
you be denied this just request ? (No, no, no.) Will 
you allow these men to treat your petitions with con- 
tempt — and the men who inhabit those palaces that 
surround you, whose storehouses are filled to reple- 
tion, who have perhaps never done a useful day's 
labor in their lives, to laugh at your misery and mock 
at your attempts at redress ? (No, no, no.) And 
though we know the property they possess is the re- 
sult of our handiwork, yet we say to them and to our 
legislators, the time has come when this system of 
plunder must be in some measure abated. Let 
them keep what they have got, but they must not op- 
pose our seeking reform. (Cheers.) And we also ask 
of our general government that a stop shall be put to 
the system of land monopoly, for it is a fact that we 
are not only the tenants of domestic capitalists, but 
foreign, and often to the crowned heads and titled 
aristocrats of the old world ; for they — knowing the 



188 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

unsafety of their positions in this day of growing intel- 
ligence, when men are learning what are their rights 
and losing their reverence for monarchy — many of 
them, purchase large tracts of land in this country as 
a retreat, for which they make the occupants pay heavy 
rents or a large advance on the price ; and, therefore, 
Congress is called upon to limit the quantity that shall 
be held, and make it free to the actual settler. And 
as there is a large surplus of money in the treasury, 
they should assist the hardy pioneer to settle it, which 
would make the nation happy and prosperous, and the 
government honored by the whole human race. And 
now, fellow workmen, you must learn this important 
fact— that your interests are one and the same — no 
matter what land gave you birth, or what religion you 
profess ; that the property of society is produced by 
labor, and capitalists flourish best when they can 
obtain labor cheapest, and every device is practised 
by them to keep the working classes from fraternizing, 
lest they should discover their true relations, and 
by that union obtain them. Therefore, national and 
religious prejudices are stimulated by these men 
among the workers, and then they smile at you with 
duplicity. But now you must unite as brothers, striv- 



THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 189 

ing for great principles, the realization of which will 
make all happy and friendly with each other." 

Thus far Mr. Davis. If this is not an incendiary 
speech, and if the cheers and no, no, noes, do not indi- 
cate ah incendiary disposition, we are at a loss to con- 
ceive how an incendiary speech could be framed, or a 
disposition to violence and riot expressed by words. 
In the address and resolutions which follow, the case 
is argued and the conclusion drawn that the city trea- 
sury of New York, the public lands of the state, and 
those of the United States, together with certain mil- 
lions of dollars in the treasury — number of millions 
not specified — should forthwith be placed at the dis- 
posal of this New York mob, chiefly composed of fo- 
reigners. This is the foreigners' remedy for hard 
times. To show that we do not misrepresent the case, 
we give the address and resolutions, read by Mr. John 
Commerford and adopted hy acclamation ! 

ADDRESS AND RESOLUTIONS. 

'' Whereas, various editors of papers and others have 
taken upon themselves to direct the action of the un- 
employed in our city and vicinity; and whereas these 
persons seem to think tliat the people have no right to 



190 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

look for relief from the municipal, state, or general 
governments. "We, the destitute and aggrieved par- 
ties, deny the soundness of such theory ; that the posi- 
tion is unsound, facts and the practice of legislation 
must prove. That it Tvas the intention of some of the 
originators of our form of government that it should 
be sternly just, and free from the dispensation of 
favors to individuals or classes in its operation, is true. 
Without the intention of claiming to be as well versed 
in the metaphysical analysis of what a government 
should be, as those who assume to teach us where we 
should halt in our expectations — in our experience we 
gather the knowledge that, in no conventional arrange- 
ment that ever led to the existence of government, 
was it supposed that the result of such convocation 
would ensure the equal protection of every member of 
the state. Is it not too true, in the necessity for the 
formation of a new or separate organization of govern- 
ment, that those who shaped its existence and launched 
it on its career for good or evil, where those whose 
station, desire and interest impelled them to appro- 
priate to themselves all the advantages of the compact. 
In the formation of our system of government it is 
useless to deny that we have escaped the predominat- 



THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 191 

ing influences. The history of the creation of the sys- 
tem which gives us our vitality as citizens, shows that, 
in the struggle to bring forth the security of ' life, li- 
berty, and the pursuit of happiness,' there were two 
opinions — one, that government should be held as an 
active coadjutor or medium, through which no ine- 
quality in condition of individuals or classes should be 
evoked or fostered ; that a government to be effective 
should be wielded by aggregating to itself the power 
of its motion, by the centripetal and concentrative ac- 
tion which it could manifest by restricting or extend- 
ing its favors, whenever it chose to exercise these func- 
tions. Thus, we see, that while the first axiom, as 
stated, has been received as a correct idea of a repub- 
lican, and, therefore, just government, the second has 
been the prevailing and practical application of the 
general and state governments. It is not with the 
theory of our government that we find fault, but with 
its practice. "With the evidence of the baneful effects 
which have brought upon our wives and children the 
paralysis and curse of want of employment, through 
the action and favoritism of our legislation, shall we 
be told to cease our murmurings and not call upon our 
representatives to proceed and make us equitable res- 



192 THE EXEMIES OE AMERICA UXMASKED. 

titution for the injuries which years of mislegislation 
have inflicted '.' Shall our complaints be dishonored 
bj those who look to the state and general treasuries 
of the peoj^le as their own exclusive property ? Shall 
those who have received the millions that have been 
appropriated to individuals, states, railroads, and the 
various companies who confederate for the purpose of 
swelling the army of accumulating plunderers, tell us 
to down and wallow in the inferiority of the condition 
with which they have provided us ? As men who are 
sensible of the injustice which is practiced by those 
who, in oui' hour of calamity, arrogantly school us to 
patiently succumb to the dreadful circumstances by 
which we are surrounded, we will say to our advisers, 
' Is it possible that you hold in your hands a scale 
that in its adjustment is always made to preponderate 
on the side of those who instruct the balance where to 
fall V Does not the venality of our instructors betray 
the motive of their attack ? Whenever we are satisfied, 
by palpable demonstration, that by precedent we have 
no right to exact labor and subsistence by legislation, 
or wherever it can be established that no individual or 
class has claimed and received protection through the 
action of c^overnment, then and not until then shall we 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 193 

listen to a species of sophistry that is as insulting to 
our self respect as disgusting to our intelligence and 
discrimination. Therefore, be it 

'' Besolvedy That in obedience to the wishes of the 
great multitude who are at present in a state of desti- 
tution, we come again to this body, to invoke its aid 
to shield them from the further visitation and continu- 
ance of the sufferings with which they are afflicted. 
Entertaining the opinion that your wish to alleviate 
the condition of the afflicted is apparently clouded by 
the restraints imposed by the laws enacted by the state 
for your government, we respect your intention to dis- 
charge your obligations. Whilst we thus measure the 
nature of your position, we are nevertheless convinced 
that you have the power to remove the obstructions 
arising from the laws under which you act. An ap- 
plication by you to our representatives at Albany for 
the alteration or suspension of any law that conflicts 
with the interest, protection, or welfare of our citizens, 
must have its paramount weight. The thousands who 
are out of employment know not where to look for re- 
lief, but to you. Where can they look but to their 
immediate representatives? In their hour of need, 
they conjecture that you are the great committee of 

17 



19J: - THE ENEMIES 01 AMERICA UXMASKED. 

Tvays and means, Tvliose duty it is to provide for their 
famishing and shelterless families. Gentlemen, Tve 
feel that the greatest Tveight of responsibility is unex- 
pectedly forced upon you. Never, since the organi- 
zation of this government, has any one state, city, or 
locality been visited vrith the sad spectacle of seeing 
over one hundred thousand men, vromen, and children 
bereft of employment and the means of living. In 
the consideration of the consequences of this unlooked 
for prostration of the elements of ^dgorous industry, 
there are but two alternatives to fall back upon. 

" First^ To extricate the people from the gloomy 
prospect of ^vant and despair, Tvhich is even now 
-wringing from them the bitter lamentations 'which pre- 
cede the wild determination of turbulence and crime. 

"-Second^ That you may escape the necessity of 
bringing into action the means or the vreapons with 
which tyranny is accustomed to sustain itself, when- 
ever it is called upon to render justice or mercy to 
those from whom it has extracted their last farthinor. 

'•Although this committee are satisfied that the 
visitation of this fearful calamity has not been the re- 
suit of chance, and notwithstanding they are fully ac- 
quainted with the causes vrhich have produced this 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF FOREIGN IMPOSTURE. 195 

state of things, they again reiterate the declaration 
that the laboring classes are in no way answerable for 
the condition in which they are found. If they have 
been made tributary in producing the present evils, it 
is only where they have exhibited their negligence in 
the selection of the proper agents who could protect 
them from that disastrous results of the corrupt and 
unwise legislation of the period. 

" Resolved, That our municipal authorities are here- 
by requested to obtain from the legislature of this 
state the passage of such alterations in any article of 
the existing charter of this city as may give the above 
named functionaries the power to levy taxes sufficient 
to collect a revenue for the immediate employment of 
such numbers of unemployed workingmen as may be 
deemed necessary. 

''Resolved, That we also ask for the suspension of 
that part of the present laws which gives the power to 
the landlord of ejecting the tenant from his premises, 
when such occupant, from want of employment, is un- 
able to pay for the use of such shelter; and further, 
that the state shall indemnify the landlords for any 
loss that may accrue from said suspension. 

''Resolved, That as the unemployed workingmen 



196 _ THE ENEMIES OE AMERICA UNMASKED. 

will not remain the recipients of charity, they call upon 
the members of the Common Council to assist them 
in demanding from the Legislature that the lands be- 
longing to the state be set apart and distributed, free 
of charge, and that the division of the amount be al- 
lotted in proportion to the number of applicants. 

" Resolved^ That this meeting solicit the aid of our 
city authorities in calling upon our representatives at 
Washington to insist upon the immediate passage of 
a homestead bill that will secure the actual settler the 
unrestricted use of one hundred and sixty acres of 
land. 

'^ Resolved^ That this meeting also request the 
Mayor, with our City Council, to join with us in calling 

upon Congress for the appropriation of millions 

of dollars, and that said moneys be proportionably set 
apart for the purchase of implements of husbandry and 
the means for the subsistence and conveyance of such 
as may need either the one or the other ; and that in 
addition the government shall be empowered by the 
appropriation to assess and hold the lands of each 
occupant subject to payments at such stipulated periods 
as may be just to both parties." 

The crowd, during the delivery of Mr. Davis's 



A 




THE GREAT MEETING OF FOUEIGNERS IN THE PARK.— P^^c 197 



THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 197 

speech, increased enormously, and the Parade Ground 
seemed alive with the vast concourse. 

The next proceeding was to march through the city 
in force, so as to menace the American inhabitants, 
and give them a clear intimation of what they were to 
expect in case the exceedingly moderate demands Bhove 
set forth should not be complied with. The reporter 
says : 

"A procession was then formed, so as to proceed in 
a body to the Park, and present the above address to 
the Common Council. They marched around the 
ground without music or banners, and certainly a 
rougher or more uncouth set never paraded in this 
city. The vastness of the crowd may be estimated 
from the fact that they had eighty marshals. Mr. 
Ben. Price officiated as Grand Marshal, assisted by 
Messsrs. Arbuthnot, Antoine Rickel, C. L. Richter, 
Robert Grant, K. A. Bailey, Charles Smith, and others. 
The procession filed out of the Parade Ground and 
marched up West Washington Place to Broadway, from 
thence to Clinton Place. Here the cry was raised, 
" Let us march up Fifth Avenue, and show ourselves 
to the aristocracy." This suggestion was adopted, 
and the motley assemblage paraded up that renowned 

17* 



198 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKEP. 

locality, to the great astonishment of its denizens, who 
might be seen crowding to the windows, and staring at 
the unwashed and greasy workmen as they filed past 
their palalial residences, minus banners or music. The 
unemployed said nothing, but walked along silently 
and sternly, though one of them somewhat facetiously 
remarked that there was a strong smell of codfish in 
that vicinity. They turned down Tenth street to 
Broadway, and then to the Park. Here another crowd 
had assembled, and by the time they were organized 
in front of the City Hall steps, there could not have 
been less than twelve thousand persons present. The 
crowd in the line of march were drawn up in files of 
eight and ten deep, and when the head of the column 
entered the Park, the rear was in the neighborhood of 
Grand Street." 

After the procession had entered the Park, and 
formed themselves in front of the City Hall, they were 
entertained with another series of inflammatory ad- 
dresses, Mr. Ira B. Davis leading off. The conclud- 
ing portion of his speech, apparently throws some 
light upon the motives of his remarkable activity in 
this business ; it seems he wishes to identify himself 



THE FOREiaNERS' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 199 

with these foreigners in order to secure their votes on 
some future occasion. He says, 

''And now, when the Mayor of your city points out 
the evil and suggests to the Common Council the ne- 
cessity of taking some measures to relieve the distress, 
it is for you to back him up, and all the members of 
the Common Council who are in your favor. (Renewed 
applause.) We are assembled here without reference 
to our political views ; we have determined, though, on 
this — having agreed upon certain fundamental prin- 
ciples which would prove a blessing to humanity, we 
say, whoever will take ground against this movement 
we will remember them hereafter — we will tell them 
that they shall never again represent us, and we will 
keep to our word. (Applause.) This we are deter- 
mined to do. 

Mr. Commerford, who succeeded Mr. Davis as 
speaker, went over nearly the same ground with respect 
to the remedy for hard times ; but seemed particularly 
anxious to induce Americans to act with the foreigners, 
and join them in the preposterous demands on the 
public lands and the public treasuries. 

The report goes on to say that : — 

Dr. Foercli next addressed the meeting in German, 



200 - THE EXEMIES OF AMERICA ^^'MASKED. 

and spoke of the condition of the laboring classes, and 
necessity for their immediate employment. He was 
followed by Mr. Macarthy, who protested on the part 
of his fellow wuDrkmen acrainst the charitv which had 
been offered by the wealthy, and said that they did 
not require alms — it was the right to live by labor 
which thev were seekino: to establish. 

J/r. SmitJi made a few remarks, in the coui'se of 
which he inveighed bitterly against the Common 
Council; which, he said, was endeavoring to starve 
them out by delay. He also launched forth a phil- 
lipic against the Know Xothings. and said when a 
man came here and declared his allegiance to the 
American flag, he was entitled to the same protec- 
tion as he who was born in the country. It appeared 
to him a very narrow minded prejudice that would say 
to a man. we will allow you the privilege of becoming 
a citizen of this country, but deny you all the bene- 
fits which might result from such citizenship. 

Mr. Ira B. Davis — The committee who have been 
appointed to present the memorial to the Common 
Council are Mr. John Commerford, Robert Grant, 
Ludovico Richter. Do you approve of them ? 

'• Yes," " yes," from the crowd and confusion. 



THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 201 

It was also carried that the same committee memo- 
ralize Congress and the State Legislature on the sub- 
ject mentioned in the address. 

Mr, Edward P, Blanhmaji was the next speaker. 
This, said he, is one of the most pitiable spectacles I 
have ever seen. To see this vast assemblage, this sea 
of upturned faces, who have come here to proclaim 
that men, able and willing to work, are starving in 
our midst. (Cheers.) We have come here to see what 
can be done for the poor in this the hour of their deep 
distress, not to discuss the propriety of holding a fancy 
ball at the Opera House, (laughter and applause,) and 
so raise money, for I am sure you would have too 
much manliness to accept aid from any such source. 
(Applause.) We do not ask that balls or festivals shall 
be given for the unemployed, but we ask for that to 
which they are entitled and should receive at the 
hands of their law givers. (Applause.) The City 
Fathers you have placed here should immediately de- 
vise some measures to employ those who are now starv- 
ing so that they may have the wherewithal to main- 
tain themselves and families through the inclement 
weather. The Common Council is but the organ to 
express your will, which to them should be law ; and 



202 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

if they do not obey you in your just demand, they 
deserve to be impeached for dereliction of duty. (Ap- 
plause.) This is not a political gathering I see before 
me. Men of all parties are here — whigs and demo- 
crats, and maybe some Know Nothings. (Laughter.) 
As for myself I am a democrat, (great applause,) but 
I came here not as a politician, nor as desiring to in- 
fluence your votes, but as a man sympathizing with 
the poor in their affliction. (Applause.) I am one 
of those who think natives and foreigners should be 
considered alike in this matter. No distinction should 
be drawn. To my mind the moment a man places his 
foot on these shores he becomes one of us, and is en- 
titled to the same consideration and privileges as any 
native citizen. (Loud cheers.) There is a proposition 
now before Congress, called the Homestead Bill, to 
give to the people the land God gave to us all. This 
measure should pass, and the soil should be hereafter 
kept for the poor in our midst and for those who may 
land upon our shores. Gentlemen, the course you 
have adopted in seeking relief from the Common 
Council is a proper one, and should be persevered in. 
If they will not pass it to-day, come again to-morrow 
and use all legal means to compel them to attend to 



THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 203 

your just demands. Stick to them till they will pass 
a law to afford you permanent relief. (Great applause.) 

The reader will observe that this Mr. Blankman 
bids for the foreign vote, by expressing the opinion 
that all foreigners should be admitted to equal pri- 
vileges with ourselves as soon as they land ; and stimu- 
lates the mob before him to compel the Common 
Council to attend to their demands. He was suc- 
ceeded by a Mr. Furlong, described by the reporter as a 
very young gentleman. His speech is unworthy of notice. 
Some one it appears, had suggested a doubt of the 
power of the Common Council of New York city, 
under the charter to apply the public money to the 
purpose of satisfying the clamors of a mob of foreign- 
ers. This difficulty is thus disposed of : 

The Qhairman said : As it has been urged by the 
Mayor and Common Council that the city charter 
does not give them power to afford any relief, it is sug- 
gested that a memorial be sent to Albany, requesting 
the Legislature, to confer on our city government 
sufficient power to help the poor efficiently. 

This proposition was put, and declared carried, amid 
great applause. 

Dr. JE. W Underliill was the next speaker. He 



204 , THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

had on different occasions tried to influence the mem- 
bers of the Common Council on behalf of the unem- 
ployed workmen. There is a remedy which will give 
the poor the relief they require. Ask the Legislature 
to appropiate half a million of dollars, to be expended 
in public works, so as to give them employment. Let 
the city government also be asked to do its share of 
the work. Mr. L'nderhill was sure that the people 
had some friends in the Common Council : Mr. Peter 
M. Scheneck was one of them ; but he regretted to 
say that when the chairman of the Finance Committee, 
Mr. Wandell, was asked his opinion on the subject of 
the workingmen's memorial, he stated that he did not 
think that the Common Council would be justified in 
taking any action at all on the subject, and was de- 
cidedly opposed to the Councilmen even considering it. 
But the people will remember these gentlemen when 
they come before them for endorsement at the polls. 
They should not forget the poor — they receive not only 
thirty-two dollars a month, but also the pickings and 
stealings besides. (Laughter.) The rights of labor 
should be more attended to, so that eventually all ex- 
chano-es, the land and machinerv, mio:ht be in the 
working classes, to whom they rightfully belong. It 



THE FOREIGNERS REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 205 

is nonsense to say the poor cannot be relieved by our 
city government ; for if any defect exists in the char- 
ter, it can be amended by the State Legislature in 
five days, if they wish it. Mr. Underbill gave notice 
that a movement was now on foot, and would soon be 
made public, having in view the organization of a new 
party based on the rights of labor. Such a movement 
could not fail to be popular, and would result in a 
great good to the community. (Enthusiastic cheering.) 

Here the chairman announced that the Common 
Council were in session, and it would be well for the 
meeting to adjourn, to allow the committee an oppor- 
tunity to wait on the two boards. 

The regular meeting at this stage of the proceed- 
ings adjourned ; but a large crowd still remaining, Paul 
and other itinerant speakers amused and edified them 
until near seven o'clock in the evening. 

Such is the report of the great meeting of the New 
York foreigners, of January the 15th, 1855, to devise 
a remedy for the existing hard times, brought upon 
the country by British free trade. The concluding 
remarks of the last speaker point to the formation of 
a new party to control the afi*airs of that city ; a party 
which, judging from the declarations and demands put 

18 



206 . THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

forth on this occasion, might very justly be denomi- 
nated the agrarian or the plunder party. In the 
speeches, made on this occasion, the idea of receiving 
relief from charity is repudiated, while a demand is 
made for employment. 

If the reader will consider what happened a few 
days after this meeting, he will be able to appreciate 
the sincerity of this sentiment so far as it respects the 
foreigners. By the North American^ of January 22, 
we learn that at the last meeting of the New York 
Board of Commissioners of Emigration the following 
curious proceeding took place : 

'' Mr. Fagan, superintendant of the Emigrant Com- 
mission in Canal street, appeared before the Board 
and stated that he had sent a number of newly ar- 
rived emigrants to several merchants, among whom 
were Mr. Grinnell and Mr. Minturn to supply the 
the places of the 'longshore men now on a strike. 
"When they arrived at the wharves, where they were 
to be employed, they were asked to go to work and 
they refused unless they were given a dollar and seventy 
five cents a day, and preferred to go back to the 
offices and subsist upon charity than to work for less 
than the wages demanded by the strikers. Mr. Fagan 



THE foreigners' REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 207 

also stated that it was quite a common thing for the 
emigrants, when offered work in the country to decline 
going there, preferring to remain in the city. 

'' Commissioner Kennedy — If these men will not 
work when it is given them, I move that they take 
their night's lodging in the street, and that we refuse 
to harbor them any longer. 

" Commissioner Purdy — I am opposed to any such 
faction; it would be cruel to do so. No doubt the 
'longshore men have been influencing them. Besides 
I can hardly blame these poor fellows, they don't wish 
to reduce the wages of these workmen." 

The emigrants here alluded to are paupers, main- 
tained at the public expense, in an institution over 
which the Board of Commissioners have jurisdiction. 

They are able bodied men, and are only supported 
till they can procure employment. It seems that they 
would rather live idly than earn an honest living by 
work, and hence reject the offer of the merchants of 
one dollar and a half a day. Most people will be ready 
to exclaim with Commissioner Kennedy, if these men 
will not work when the chance is given them, let them 
be turned into the street. But there are also many 
s(|ueaiinsh Commissioner Purdys, who occupy public 



208 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

offices, or hope to do so, and who, with an eye to popu- 
larity, say '' it would be cruel" to '' blame these men." 

Here we have a counterpart for the picture just 
given, of the grand meeting in the Park. At the 
meeting the foreigners demand the public lands to 
live on, and the public money to buy agricultural im- 
plements that they may gain an honest living by 
labor ; in the subsequent transaction, we find the 
foreigners refusing to labor for one dollar and fifty 
cents a day, in the city and declining to go in the 
country at all ; and then to crown the whole, when one 
commisstoner wishes to do them justice, by refusing to 
support them in idleness, another bids for the foreign 
vote, by placing them again on the charity list. 

It is the old story — foreign impudence imposing 
upon American forbearance ; and American politi- 
cians exhibiting the basest subserviency to Foreign 
Influence. Surely it is high time that we had a really 
American party in this country to put an end to this 
sort of thing once and forever — If foreigners must be 
permitted to browbeat, insult. New York ; at any rate 
Americans should ride America. Having thus learnt 
what is the foreigners' remedy for the present hard 
times, we will now propose someximerican remedies. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 

The American people have been accustomed to prac- 
tical republicanism ever since the cavaliers settled Vir- 
ginia, and the Puritans, New England. Even when 
acknowledging the sovereignty of the king of England, 
they managed all their affairs upon purely democratic, 
or upon republican principles. Their town meetings, 
and their colonial legislatures became the nurseries of 
statesmen, every man acquired a spirit of freedom and 
personal independence, utterly unknown in countries 
which groan under the sway of absolute monarchs. 

When Americans really feel that they are oppressed, 
or even badly governed, they have a time-honored cus- 

18* (209) 



210 ' THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

torn of taking the matter in hand and setting it right. 
If one method is not feasible, they resort to another ; 
and never leave the business until it is settled to their 
satisfaction. Thus, when our ancestors wished to ex- 
press their dissatisfaction with the principle of taxation 
without representation, they first petitioned and re- 
monstrated. This being disregarded by the govern- 
ment, thev entered into associations bindinoc themselves 
not to use tea, the article taxed. When this produced 
no effect, they threw the tea into Boston harbor, or 
or sent it back to England, or put it out of the way in 
some other fashion. This being resented, and force 
employed to produce submission to the tax, war, revo- 
lution, and independence followed, by a straight for- 
ward and natural sequence : 

"Who would be free — themselyes must strike tlie blow." 

The people — the people it is, that must rectify ex- 
isting evils and restore the good old times, when labor 
received its just reward, and the country was not taxed 
and drained of its money down to the starving point, 
to pamper the pride and extravagance of foreign 
speculators. 

The people have already begun to take the matter 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 211 

in hand in a political way. They are already forming 
associations in every state of the Union, destined to 
protect American labor, by insisting on sound legisla- 
tive enactments for that very purpose. But this takes 
time ; and, besides, it is not all that is required in the 
case. We must have not only political associations 
for our protections. We must remember that while 
the statesmen of the first continental congress were 
preparing for revolution, the women of America were 
conscientiously abstaining from their favorite beverage. 
" No taxed tea !" was their cry from Georgia to Maine. 
In the year 1840, when every kind of labor in this 
country was depressed to the starving point, in conse- 
quence of the free trade measures by which duties on 
foreign imports had been reduced to very low rates, a 
similar spirit was abroad in the country, and a rising 
up of the people took place, w^hich has seldom been 
paralleled. The free trade administration was dis- 
placed, and General Harrison was elected, pledged to 
give us better times. Although he did not live to fulfil 
his pledge, a tariff was enacted in 1842, which did give 
us better times. Its effects was so palpable that all 
parties acknowledged it. Even in Pennsylvania, the 
election had to be carried under the party banner of 



212 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

"Polh, Lrillas, and tie Tariif erf 1842/' and if ever 
a public man vent into office pledged b j the "wishes of 
his constituents and his o'vni sanction of them, to sup- 
port a measure, Mr. Dallas was pledged to support 
that tariff against which he crave his castinor vote in 

c Co 

1846. How his own state regarded his conduct was 
fully evinced by their deserting the administration at 
the next state election, and at the next presidential 
election. 

The American people are always prompt in reme- 
dying national evils, whenever they are fuUy roused 
and wide awake to perceive the actual existence of 
those evils. They are fully aware at this moment 
that something is wi'ong, because labor — American" 

LABOR 15 NOT REWARDED AS IT SHOULD BE. They are 

inquiring what it is that is wrong. Foreigners and 
their hireling presses are endeavoring, as usual, to put 
them on the wi'ong scent, to mystify, and humbug them 
with false issues so as to continue to fasten upon them 
the galling bondage resulting from the preference of 
foreign to American labor. As we have ah-eady seen 
in the preceding chapter, the foreigners in Xew York 
would persuade us that all is wrong, because they are 
not entrusted or rather presented with the public lands 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 213 

and the public money in the treasury. The hireling 
presses tell us that all our distresses arise from extra- 
vagance and overtrading, which is not the real or chief 
cause of the trouble. 

We say that the wrong lies in a tariflf which was con- 
structed under British influence and enacted through 
the foulest and most corrupt intrigues for the very pur- 
pose of destroying American manufactures, reducing 
the price of American cotton and other agricultural 
products, and thus making the United States wholly 
and completely tributary to British and other foreign 
interests. We point to the present condition of the 
country in proof of our assertion. We ask what has 
become of the gold which has been passing out of our 
country during the whole of the year 1854 ? Has it 
not gone to Europe to pay for manufactures of cloth 
and iron, which under the tariff of 1842 would have 
been produced here ? If we manufactured the goods 
which ought to be manufactured here, would not these 
millions upon millions of specie which we have been 
exporting last year, have been still in the country, 
forming the basis of our circulating currency, stimu- 
lating and rewarding industry, gladdening the heart 
of the laborer, and breathing the breath of life into 



214 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

our whole system of business, which now seems at the 
point of death. 

Let any man look around and see with his own eyes 
what presents itself in every city, town, and village. 
Broadcloth coats on the backs of all who wear coats, 
made of the produce of the looms of Europe, while the 
newspapers tell us that the last broadcloth factory in 
America has just expired, because the tariflf of 1846, 
through the contrivance of British agents and the 
influence of British gold, puts a very high duty on the 
import of wool to keep foreign wool out of the country, 
and a very low duty on cloth to enable the British to 
kill up and crush out our factories. 

Say, Americans ! Is this bearable ? Shall we 
tamely look on and see American labor thus defrauded, 
cheated of its rights by foreign intrigue and corrup- 
tion. Shall Europe for ever have the monopoly of 
furnishing every yard of broadcloth worn in the United 
States ? Now that our last broadcloth factory is 
ruined and shut up, shall we never have another to the 
end of time ? These questions are for the American 
people to answer — and to answer not by words but by 
actions. This thing is wrong. "\Ye call upon the 
American people to set it right. 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 215 

Again — Let any man walk the streets in town or 
country and look about him. Will he not see silks 
and brocades, from the looms of Lyons, worn by women 
of all classes, even by servants and negro wenches. 
Will he not see fine lawns, calicoes, muslins, jewelry, 
and gew-gaws of every descriptions, all imported from 
Europe, and worn by our women of all classes ? Is this 
right ? In the name of Greorge Washington and all 
true American patriots, cannot the workmen of this 
country produce every imaginable article of dress or 
decoration which it becomes a true-hearted American 
woman to wear? 

Our country abounds in iron ore. It is to be found 
in almost every state of the Union ; and whenever 
labor receives encouragement from our government, 
it is successfully and extensively wrought. But under 
the tariff of 1846, this branch of industry has been so 
effectually discouraged, that of the thousands of miles 
of railroads in our country, nearly all are laid with 
rails made in England. These are paid for in bonds 
hearing interest^ sold in England. The returns for 
the bonds are made to this country not in money, but 
in British manufactured goods. Thus in every railroad 
that we make, we contrive twice to defraud American 



216 - THE EXEMIES OF AMEPvICA UXMASKED. 

labor of Its rights. First, by buying rails which Ame- 
ricans ought to make of their own iron, and, secondly, 
by receiving, instead of hard cash, bales of English 
broadcloth and calicoes, which we might just as well 
produce in this country, if the people could only be- 
come sensible of their true interest. 

The amount of these railroad bonds now held in En- 
gland is already so considerable that the annual inte- 
rest on them requires an export of California gold, 
which is counted by tens of millions. In fact, the 
whole tendency of our present system is to reward En- 
glish labor and defraud the American laborer of his 
rights — to enrich England, and impoverish and enslave 
America — enslave is the word, for debt is only another 
term for slavery. 

We have already remarked, that, when the American 
people can fully be made to understand that an exist- 
ing system is wrong, they at once go to work and set 
it right. Do any of our readers inquire how this is to 
be done We answer, it must ultimately be done by 
enacting a tariff to protect American labor. But, as 
we have ulready remarked, this requires time. We 
can hardly hope for it under the present administra- 
tion of the government. In the mean time, however, 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 217 

much may be done by tlie people taking the thing in 
hand themselves, as they did in the old colony times, 
and opposing to this avalanche of foreign productions 
a stern determination to dispense with them as far as 
possible. Where there is a will there is a way ; and 
while waiting for just and proper self-protective enact- 
ments, we may do much by an organized resistance to 
our foreign oppressors. In this connection our readers 
will permit us to quote some very apposite remarks of 
a cotemporary, the editor of the Philadelphia "Sun," 
He says, 

'^ Our present desire is to advert to the means of 
Protecting American Industry and elevating American 
Labor, without the intervention of Congressional 
action. We have too long been dependent upon the 
workshops and manufactories of Europe, and slaves to 
the fashions of London and Paris. Nearly ,a quarter 
of a century has passed since that stern old patriot, 
Andrew Jachson^ said it was time for us to become 
more Americanized, and yet his advice has been to- 
tally disregarded. We talk of protection to Ameri- 
can industry ; we find our wagon in the mire of foreign 
importations, and instead of putting our own shoulders 
to the wheels for the purpose of extrication, we call 

19 



218 ,THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

upon Hercules or Congress for relief! Congress may 
impose cent, per cent, ad valorem duties, but still the 
follies and frivolities of dress, the aping of the gaudy- 
saloons of St. James or Versailles, and the spread of 
anti-republican luxuriousness, induce us to depend on 
the shuttles of Great Britain for our cloths, and the 
looms of France for our silks. With every great staple 
for asserting national independence, indigenous to our 
soil, we are still the ' white slaves' of trans- Atlantic 
capital, and it has now in the course of human events, 
become as necessary to dissolve the business bonds 
which have connected us with Europe, as it was ne- 
cessary in 1776 to sunder our political allegiance to 
Great Britain, and assume among the powers of the 
earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws 
of nature and nature's God entitle these United 
States. 

'' The Jacksonian ecphosis should become the creed 
of every patriot, and we should one and all determine 
to become more Americanized. How can this be done ! 
We have scores of able writers and zealous advocates 
of American Protection, who have theorized and sub- 
limated the whole question, but have never shown us 
how it could practically be applied. Pamphleteers and 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 219 . 

editors have appealed to Congress ; political elections 
have been lost and won on the Tariff question ; parties 
have entirely changed fronts upon it — and yet nothing 
has been proposed as eflScient to the permanent pro- 
tection of our Industry, and the elevation of our 
Labor. Where is the politico-economist of leisure and 
grasping intellect to proclaim the terms of our second 
Declaration of Independence, and win a renown as im- 
mortal as enwreathes the name of Thomas Jefferson ? 
We see in the distant future, the gleaming of a brighter 
destiny, but who will point the way to attain it ? 

" Since the above was written, we find in the New 
York Mirror^ a paper ever earnest ' to strike the chord 
of Americanism in regard to our individual and na- 
tional duty, as a people to cast off foreign fashions 
and cloths — to return from the universal patronage of 
the capital and labor of Europe, and henceforth pro- 
tect our own labor, be independent and stand by our- 
selves ;' — a paper which justly prides itself, though 
' others may have thought of urging the same thing, 
and the idea may have been partially developed in 
tariffs and political protective essays,' that it ' took 
the initiative in presenting and urging it on the broad 
and only true grounds, — first, as a matter of duty 



220 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and necessity, if we wish to see American Industry per- 
manently prosperous and independent — and second, 
as a matter of patriotic pride, of which every Ameri- 
can should have enough to be for ever dependent on 
foreign products, when he or his countrymen can pro- 
duce as good, or better at home ;' — we find the follow- 
ing cheering words and practical hints, which we com- 
mend to the earnest attention of men of business. 
The Mirror says : 

" This American idea smacking of no party or 
policy, save the people and the public good, has taken 
right hold of the public mind, and is already flowered 
and bearing fruit. It has struck its roots deep in 
public sentiment, and is being discussed and accepted 
practically throughout the country. Governors of States 
have endorsed it, and what is better, have donned suits 
of American clothes ; associations and leagues are 
forming to strengthen and push on therevolution ; the 
press discovers in it the solution of the great problems, 
' How shall we keep American labor bravely employed, 
and how prevent commercial crises and money panics Y 
It was a live American idea, and we only had to ' trot 
it out' and show it up to make it every body's favo- 
rite — the w^orkingman's, the manufacturer's, and the 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 221 

merchant's. Accepted and popular, the practice 
of it only requires to become fashionable^ to make it 
universal and render its triumph complete. 

" New England is astir with the ' clothe themselves, 
idea/ and well she may be. Let us have this American 
patronage of Europe's looms, and forges, and artisan 
shops cut off, and our own resources developed by our 
own skill and industry, and the factories of New En- 
gland will clap their busy hands and make glad music 
through the length and breadth of the land. There 
will be no forced idlers then. The ranks of the great 
' operative' army (craftsmen of all sorts) will broaden 
and deepen, making broader the market for the earth 
tiller. Measureless resources that now lie dormant, 
will awaken at the summons of revived industry, and 
a nation, nobly independent at length, will wonder at 
the blind folly which led it so long a captive to grace 
the triumphs of foreign labor. Combined with the 
political purification that is going forward, the reali- 
zation of this new American industrial idea is the most 
hopeful event of the day. In truth, the new industrial, 
owes much to the new political idea. The dawn of a 
healtheir and sturdier nationality shines through both. 
The American is awakening to a true perception of 

19* 



222 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

his duty and destiny, and he will not rest until every 
domestic stumbling block is removed and every foreign 
shackle cast off. 

" But to come to the point we had in mind when we 
commenced this article — ' who will lead ?' not in New 
England, nor up North, nor out West, nor down South — 
but here — ricrht here in this crreat citv ! The cauldron 
of industrial revolution begins to bubble — as old fo- 
reign garments drop off American suits are to be put 
on — American products, in preference to foreign, are 
to be used, and the hour for this change — wide and 
radical — is close at hand. Americanism is to be the 
fashion and the rage, as well as the quiet resolve. 
Who will take time by the forelock, and lead the 
Americanizing host? What clothesmaker, hatter, 
shoemaker and men of all manufacturing crafts will 
first hoist the banner and run out the sign — 'Protec- 
tion to American Industry — American fabrics made 
and sold here.' Who is shrewd enough to thrust out 
the first sickle for the coming harvest ? What misses 
or mesdames will lead in dressing our women as re- 
publican American women should be dressed ? Who 
will lead — who?" 

Such is the recommendation of American writers, 



THE AMERICAN REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES. 223 

who are uncorruptecl by the bribery of England. Such 
are the views of those patriots who are desirous that 
Americans should rule America ; and that our own 
workingmen should no longer walk the streets un- 
employed, while the looms and forges of Europe are 
in full activity, and a continuous stream of California 
gold is flowing out of our own country to pay foreign 
laborers and artisans and fill the coffers of foreign 
capitalists. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

HOW AMERICAN WO^IEN MAY ASSIST IN APPLYING 
THE REMEDY. 

The women of America are better treated than those 
of any other country in the world. This fact is so 
universally admitted that we do not deem it necessary 
to bestow any time in arguing the point. Our women 
receive the greatest degree of courtesy and kindness. 
Their wishes are consulted on all occasions, and their 
convenience is studied in all our social arrangements. 
Hence it ia that they exert an immense influence 
on the whole course of American life, and when any 
great object in the economy of life is to be attained 
their good will and their aid becomes indispensable. 
(224) 



AMERICAN WOMEN MAY ASSIST IN THE REMEDY. 225 

It is especially so in the great object of relieving tlie 
present pressure of hard times. 

In New England — ^in Boston, the cradle of the re- 
volution, they have already been appealed to, and that 
successfully. There the work is already begun. "We 
desire to see it spread throughout the land. We there- 
fore copy from the Boston Transcript, one of the ap- 
peals which was made to the women there. In doing 
so, however, we must first enter our protest against one 
portion of the premises upon which the conclusions of 
the writer were founded. He assumes that the Ame- 
rican people have been universally extravagant. This 
we deny. The great mass of the people have not been 
extravagant beyond their means. Such a charge implies 
dishonesty; and the American people are honest and 
honorable. The excessive imports do not result from 
the demands of the mass of the people for foreign luxu- 
ries, but from the iniquitous contrivances of British free 
trade. These luxuries are thrust upon us by foreigners ; 
and those who have money buy and use them. But 
the consumers are not generally the working classes 
of the country. Still the effect is precisely the same. 
If the wealthy buy so largely of foreign luxuries that 
a large balance of trade is created against the country. 



226 , THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

SO as to drain off the specie, the consequent distress to 
the working class is inevitable, and the poor and the 
industrious classes are punished for the follies of the 
rich. 

So far as iron, broadcloth, and cotton are concerned, 
however, all classes sin and suffer alike. They sin in 
not manufacturing them in our own country or rather 
in not compelling the government to make such pro- 
tective laws as will enable the people to manufacture 
them for themselves ; and they suffer by the hard 
times which always follow a period of British free 
trade. 

But we proceed to quote the Boston article. It is 
entitled ''Hard Times.'' 

" Every body talks and thinks about the ' hard 
times ;' and almost every body feels them, and knows 
by bitter experience, what they mean. But very few 
stop to consider, as carefully as they should, what is 
the cause of all the suffering and anxiety they share 
or witness, or what remedy there may be for either. 
Some attribute our troubles to the banks, and demand 
more discounts — as if the banks were not always eager 
to do just as much business as they can do lawfully 
and safely. Some attribute them to the great frauds 



AMERICAN WOMEN MAY ASSIST IN THE REMEDY. 227 

of agents, who have mismanaged the affairs of great 
corporations, and so created a wide distrust — as if a 
few unprincipled men could, by mere peculations, blight 
a whole land worth a million times more than they have 
cheated it out of. And others give other reasons for 
them. Each of these reasons has some weight ; but 
no one of them is of much significance, nor could all 
put together produce such effects as we witness, or ac- 
count for them. It is the people — the mass of the 
people — that make the trouble. No less power can 
bring about such results. The universal extravagance 
has caused the universal depression and anxiety, that 
is now felt. 

" If an individual spends more than his income, every 
body knows that he must retrench or be ruined. If 
the whole nation runs into similar extravagance — a 
nation being only a mass of individuals — the whole 
nation must retrench or be ruined. In the United 
States, for several years back, we have been spending 
extravagantly, and the consequence is, that there is 
now a general embarrassment and trouble ; and we 
begin to hear a cry to know the cause and find the 
remedy. The cause is as plain as the way to church ; 
the remedy is equally plain, but by no means agree- 



228 - IHE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

able. 'We have bought more than we can pay for 
with our present incomes. "We must, therefore, re- 
trench, or go on suffering more and more. 

'* That this is the true state of the case may be made 
clear by two examples, taken from the opposite ex- 
tremes of our folly. The Secretary of the Treasury 
tells us that in our last fiscal year we imported thirty- 
three millions worth of silk goods. Silks we produce 
at heme only in small quantities, and it is the merest 
luxury. We should be as warm and as well off, physi- 
cally, in all respects, without spending a dollar on it. 
Now if we want to know what is done with it, look at 
the dresses of our women whose husbands and fathers 
cannot afford to pay for them, or at the drapery of 
their parlors, which are becoming mere monuments of 
vanity and bad taste by their heavy and inelegant ex- 
travagance. Or what, perhaps, is yet more obvious, 
look at our large hotels, and the people who frequent 
them. One of them, in New York, whose Ladies' Or- 
dinary was lately a sight like a show at a play house, 
and had damask curtains in its drawing-rooms that 
cost fifteen thousand dollars. At the last accounts 
they were in the sheriff's hands. Private parlors of 
the same fashion are coming fast to the same end. 



i 



AMERICAN WOMEN MAY ASSIST IN THE REMEDY. 229 

'' But let US go to the other extreme of our folly. 
We are compelled to import silks if we must have them ; 
but if there is any thing of which we have enough, 
and to spare, it is stones — marble and granite and the 
sand stone, and all kinds of stones. New England and 
the Middle States are full of them. But quantities 
are now imported from France ! Churches and houses, 
in no small numbers, are built of them in New York 
and Brooklyn, and elsewhere. One person in New 
York, we understand now offers a hundred tons of them 
for sale. Next, we ought to hear of importing dirt to 
cover up our own rocks, lest the sight of them should 
reproach us with our senseless extravagrance. Sancho, 
in Don Quixote, characterizes a man's folly by saying, 
he wants better bread than can be made out of wheat. 
Do we want better churches and houses than can be 
built out of Quincy and Rockport granite, or Berk- 
shire and Vermont marble, or Connecticut sandstone ? 
The very suggestion is ridiculous. 

" But there is no need of such separate illustrations. 
Our importations for the last two years show our ex- 
travagrance and folly, in the gross, just as plainly as 
our French silks and French building stones show 
them in detail. Take, for example, the years 1844 

20 



230 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

and 1845, and compare them with the years 1853, and 
1854, and see what the Secretary of the Treasury 
says about them ; we mean, what he says about mer- 
chandise and goods of every sort imported and con- 
sumed m the United States in those years, taking the 
amount as estimated at the place whence they were 
shipped. 

His table runs as follows : 



TEAR. 


VALUE. 


POPULATION. 


EACH PERSON 


InlSM, 


$96,95,000 


19,741,000 


$5,03 


In 1845, 


101,907,000 


19,984,000 


5,15 


In 1853, 


250,420,000 


25,000,400 


10,00 


In 1854, 


279,712,000 


25,500,000 


10,00 



That is, in ten years, we have almost exactly double 
the average, proportion of our importations for each 
individual in the country. We have paid in the places 
where the goods were shipped, ten dollars for every 
man, woman and child in the United States — includ- 
ing the slaves — and to these ten dollars we must add 
charges and duties, and profits, that will bring the 
whole up to an average of sixteen or eighteen dollars 
of merchandize imported for each soul on our soil, 
each of the last two years. Such a monstrous fact 
needs only to be stated. It needs no Poor Richard 




AMERICAN WOMEN MAY ASSIST IN THE REMEDY. 231 

to cypher out its meaning and its consequences. If, 
therefore, we intend to get out of our troubles, it is 
plain that we must import less. But, to stop this ruin- 
ous importation, the people must buy less of it. It is 
their affair entirely. They can mend the times or make 
them harder, just as they choose ; and no other means 
or power on earth can do either. 

"Now, ladies ! would you help your country out of its 
trouble ? Then resolve each one, and form leagues 
with others of your sex, to purchase no article of dress, 
ornament, or furniture, which is not made by your 
own countrymen or countrywomen ! And let the 
fathers, husbands, brothers, and beaux of America 
come to the same laudable determination ! Then shall 
we once more see prosperity in our land, and financial 
peace thoughout our borders ! Take a copy of the 
following pledge upon a sheet of paper, and hand it 
roun d for signatures : 

PLEDGE IN BEHALF OF DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 

'' In view of the ' Hard Times' arising from exces- 
sive importation, we hereby mutually promise not to 
purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can 
readily be obtained of home make, for the space of at 



232 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

least one year, renewable at our pleasui>e. We will 
emulate the noble example of our mothers, during the 
Revolution — who refused to drink the foreign tea, or 
wear the foreign silk forced upon our country by Bri- 
tish oppressors. 

Signed by Martha Washington, Mrs. John Hancock 
and others.'' 

Such is the Boston appeal to American women. We 
hope and trust that it will be responded to thorugh the 
whole length and breadth of the land. 



1 



CHAPTER XVII. 

WHAT WOULD BE THE EFFECT OF THE AMERICAN 
REMEDY. 

We wish our readers to keep all the time distinctly 
in view what is the precise length and breadth of the 
remedy for hard times which we propose. It is the 
ridding ourselves of foreign influence wholly and en- 
tirely, and establishing a complete financial as well as 
political and social American Independence. We must 
put away the unclean thing entirely from our midst. 
Foreign goods must be dispensed with gradually at first : 
but, as near as may be, totally at last. Foreign no- 
tions of government and social life must be repudiated. 
Foreign interference in every shape must be rebuked 

20* (233) 



234 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and excluded ; and Americans must rule America in 
politics, finance, and society. 

Whenever these objects can be accomplished, this 
nation will become not only the freest, but the richest, 
most prosperous and happy nation in the world. Hard 
times will have become a matter of past history, a won- 
der and astonishment to our children, that shall here- 
after take our places in the great theatre of action. 
All the branches of industry will be amply rewarded. 
The farmer, the manufacturer, and the trader, instead 
of imagining that their interests are opposed to each 
other, and that the protective laws which favor one 
class of American workmen injure another, will then 
learn, by happy experience, that their true interests 
are all identical. They will see and feel that all their 
past sufi'erings have resulted from foreign influence 
and the subserviency of their law-givers to foreign in- 
terests. They will know that the law which protects 
the American mine and the American loom, protects 
also the American plough. They will know that the 
internal exchanges and internal commerce of the coun- 
try are of infinitely more value than the foreign com- 
merce. They will learn that the first and paramount 
consideration of every American is the protection of 



THE EFFECT OF THE AMERICAN REMEDY. 235 

our homes; and the securino: to every American work- 
man the peaceful enjoyment of his own fire side, safe 
from the dread of those frightful hard times which are 
the result of British free trade. 

War is a dreadful evil ; but the last war with Great 
Britain was a blessing to this country, by means of the 
impulse which it gave to our internal commerce and 
home manufactures. Its effects on these important 
interests were immediate and lasting, We have often 
thought and said, that a new war with England would 
be preferable to the present state of things ; and we 
have just been reminded of this opinion by an article 
in the New York Tribune, which we proceed to quote, 
as follows : 

'' The Serald is an advocate of free trade, but once 
and a while, unlike its compeers of The Evening Post 
and Journal of Commerce^ it tells the truth on the 
other side. Thus, for instance, speculating on the 
effect of a war between England and this country, the 
Herald has the following : 

" ' Of course, at first, the agricultural interests would 
suffer from the want of a market for their cotton, corn, 
and tobacco. But they have before been worse off in 
this respect than they ever could be now with a popu- 



236 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

lation of twenty-six millions ; and the depression has 
never lasted over a year or two. Raw produce would 
fall in price, and so would land ; but, at the same time, 
manufactured articles would be enhanced, and mills 
and factories would rise in every quarter of the coun- 
try. After a few months' inconvenience, the labor 
which would be thrown out of employment by the fall 
of agricultural produce would flock to the mills ; and 
would soon find there all that any man has a right to 
claim in this world — an opportunity of selling his labor 
at a remunerative price. The crisis in England would, 
of course, produce a corresponding crisis among the 
foreign merchants here ; but this too would only be a 
nine days' wonder. In the end — if the war or non- 
intercourse lasted ten or fifteen years — this country 
would then he in a position to command the v^orld.' 

" This is the simple truth, and we commend it to 
the reflection of all who are anxious to know how to 
secure to every man in the United states ' an oppor- 
tunity of selling his labor at a remunerative price.' 
There cannot be a question that, sufficient restrictions 
on commercial intercourse with France, and England, 
and Germany, would not only render . this country 
prosperous and powerful, but would for ever emanci- 



THE EFFECT OF THE AMERICAN REMEDY. 237 

pate it from all dependence on foreign conntries for 
manufactured articles, whether cotton, linen, woollen, 
silk, or iron. But why need we wait for the awful 
emergency of a war, with all its bloodshed and indivi- 
dual miseries, to assure to every laborer ' an opportu- 
nity of selling his labor at a remunerative price V A 
brief legislative act will do it — a simple arrangement 
of the tariff, which may be accomplished even without 
enhancing the present aggregate duties. There is 
not the slightest occasion to disturb our peaceful re- 
lations with " one of the powers of the world, in 
order to achieve an end of such inestimable value to 
our people, and to the cause of universal freedom. Nor 
do we need to enact such a tariif for a period so long 
as that above suggested. Eight years of judicious 
protection will suflSce to put our industry in a position 
to defy the hostility of the world. If, by a peaceful 
and inoifensive law, we can do this, why not attempt 
it ? There is only one reason. This is, that the 
country is governed by southern slave-holders — with 
whom a few northern free-trade theorists, and unprin- 
cipled journals like the Herald and the Journal^ com- 
bine to maintain the free states, and, indeed, the coun- 
try at large, in a state of subserviency to European 



238 , THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

manufacturers ; though this end is gained by depriv- 
ing myriads of American laborers of the opportunity 
of selling their labor at a remunerative price." 

So says the Tribune. This paper will always have 
its fling at the slave-holders. But as the slave-holders 
are Americans and brothers, we think it would be well 
to leave ofi" railing at them and call in their aid in the 
good cause. If they could by reasoning be made to 
understand that the benefits of protection to other 
sections of the country would redound to their interest, 
as it certainly would, they would cheerfully lend us 
their assistance. 

If the manufacture of cotton goods in this country 
were so effectually protected as to be increased a hun- 
dred fold, certainly the price of the raw material 
would be much higher than it is now. The demand for 
cotton in England will continue, for they must con- 
tinue to manufacture it for other markets, even if ours 
is wholly closed to them ; and the building up of a 
grand system of cotton manufactures, through our 
whole country, north, south, east and west would give 
such an impulse to the culture of cotton as it never 
had before. 

While we are defending American interests, we would 



THE EFFECT OF THE AMERICAN REMEDY. 239 

be understood to defend them all, southern as well as 
northern. It is these sectional broils which serve the 
interests of British free trade. The British njaxim in 
their proceedings all over the world is, and always has 
been, ''Divide and conquer.'' This gave them their 
empire in India. The first conquests of Olive were 
founded upon this maxim. So were the successes of 
Hastings, and the more recent British commanders in 
that country. This is also their maxim in their inter- 
course with us. They set the north against the south 
by sending Thompson and other abolition missionaries 
to the northern states ; and by praising and flatter- 
ing Mrs. Stowe ; and they set the south against the 
north, by making the southerners believe that the 
northern manufacturers are their enemies ; and the 
result of the whole operation is a new conquest for 
England, a financial conquest accomplished by Bri- 
tish free trade laws, and resulting in sending all our 
California gold to London, and bringing upon the 
United States the crushing pressure of hard times. 

Let us leave ofi* sectional bickerings and quarrels, and 
look to American interests. Let us resolve to seek the 
welfare of the country, the whole country and nothing 
but the country. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION AND RELIGION. 

The influence exerted by the Roman Catholic 
Church in this country, in education and religion is 
not merely passive. It is meddling and aggressive. 
We have in the United States a noble system of free 
schools, supported by taxation on the people. This 
system, commenced in the infancy of the colonies, by 
the Pilgrim Fathers, of New England, has gradually 
difiused itself to all parts of the country, shedding the 
blessings of freedom and intelligence, wherever it 
prevails. It has " grown with our growth and strength- 
ened with our strength," until it has come to be recog- 
nized as the very palladium of American liberty. 
(240) 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION. 241 

This noble system, the Eoman Catholic priests have 
been for many years endeavoring by every species of 
intrigue to overturn and destroy. Not content with 
demanding as their right that the Bible should be ex- 
cluded from the common schools, thus depriving all the 
children frequenting them of the best and holiest means 
of moral instruction, they have ventured upon the fur- 
ther demand that a portion of the money raised by 
taxation, for the benefit of all, should be set aside to 
be applied exclusively to the support of Eoman Ca- 
tholic schools — a thing hitherto unheard of in the 
history of the republic. 

The object of this proceeding is altogether worthy 
of the Jesuit brain that conceived it. It is nothing 
less than the complete overthrow of the whole system 
of common schools. For it is perfectly clear that if 
our legislators should grant this privilege to one sect, 
other sects would forthwith claim it; and thus the 
common schools^ those in which all sects participate in 
equal means of instruction at the public expense would 
cease to exist. A more disorganizing and dangerous 
project could not be conceived. It has long been pur- 
sued with that unflinching perseverance by which the 
Jesuits have always been distinguished, and it will never 

21 



242 - THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

cease to be pursued, until their influence is utterly 
annihilated. 

This scheme of the Jesuits is aggressive. It is ut- 
terly hostile to enlightened freedom and to the best 
interests of the country ; and this they know perfectly 
well. But it favors their other schemes for building 
up a Jesuit power on the ruins of freedom, since the 
ignorance and superstition of the masses form the best 
possible foundation on which to build their superstruc- 
ture of imposture and religious and political despotism. 

If the system of common school education could be 
broken up and destroyed, then the Jesuits would have 
free play. Their influence would increase a thousand 
fold. Ignorance and superstition would cover the land 
as extensively as light and intelligence overspread it 
now. No legend would be too ridiculous, no miracle 
too monstrous, for the people to believe ; and political 
power, as in many other countries where Catholicism 
prevails, would speedily pass into the hands of Roman 
Catholic priests and Jesuit confessors. 

Some may suppose that the Roman Catholic church 
of the present day is more liberal and more favorable 
to education, science, and freedom, than it was in for- 
mer times. But this is not so. The Roman Church 



FOBEIGN INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION. 243 

boasts that it is uncliangeable. If you look into its 
publications, intended for diffusion among the people, 
you will find that they make demands on popular cre- 
dulity quite as monstrous as those of the dark ages ; 
and implicit belief is inculcated as a religious duty, 
whilst the least shadow of unbelief is threatened with 
eternal damnation to the unbeliever. 

In order to show our readers that the Roman Ca- 
tholic Church of the present day is as capable of the 
grossest imposture on the people, as it was in the 
darkest period of the middle ages, we will quote from 
a recent publication, a well authenticated and publicly 
known instance of a very recent date. It is entitled, 

A MIRACLE or MODERN TIMES. 

" Mr. Spencer, a gentleman favorably known to the 
English public by his ' Travels in Circassia,' has given 
in his late work, ' A Tour of Inquiry through France 
and Italy,' the following curious account of one of 
those pretended miracles by which Romish priestcraft 
still endeavours to deceive the credulous multitude and 
maintain its domination over the souls of men. We 
quote it chiefly on account of the remarkable ingenuity 
which it exhibits, and the success with which the cheat 



244 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

was attended among the acute and inquiring people 
of France in our own day. 

" The miracle-worker was Rose Tamisier, a peasant 
girl, gratuitously educated in a convent of nuns at Sa- 
lon Bouches-du-Rhone, where eventually she became 
an inmate, and made herself remarkable by the fre- 
quent visits she asserted she was in the habit of re- 
ceiving from certain saints and angels — above all, from 
the Virgin Mary. At length, waxing bolder, she de- 
clared herself endowed with a Divine commission to 
restore what her people denominated religion in France, 
and for that purpose left the convent, proceeding first 
to her native village, Saignon, where she and all the 
priests of the province asserted her first miracle was 
wrought, by causing, says the Abbe Andre, Rose's 
biographer, the growth of a cabbage, sufficiently large 
to feed the hungry villagers for several weeks, during 
a season of such universal drought that all other vege- 
tation withered away. It was also asserted that Rose 
refused every species of nourishment but consecrated 
wafers, which angels were in the habit of purloining 
from the sacred pyx of the church, wherewith to feed 
this favorite of heaven. The saint, however, did not 
remain long in her birth-place. The same angelic as- 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN RELIGION. 245 

sistants, by her own account, transported Rose to the 
larger and more populous village of St. Saturnin. 
Here her fame, which had hitherto been known only 
to the simple vine-dressers and the mountain shepherds, 
spread far and wide. The Abbe declares, that ' by 
the intensity of her devotion she caused the represen- 
tation of a cross, a heart, a chalice, a spear, and some- 
times the image of the Virgin and Child, to appear on 
various parts of her body, at first in faint lines, and 
afterwards so developed at to exude blood I thereby 
exciting the amazement and pious admiration of every 
beholder.' But she now worked in the little church 
St. Saturnin, the crowning miracle, by causing a picture 
of Christ descending from the cross to emit real blood, 
and that in the presence of the parish priest and a 
numerous congregation assembled to witness the event. 
This took place for the first time, on the 10th of No- 
vember, 1850. The scientific men of France, who 
sent several deputations to ascertain the existence of 
these singular appearances on the body of the St. of 
Saturnin, came to the conclusion that intense devotion, 
where the mind is absorbed in one subject, might from 
known causes without intervention of any superna- 
tural agency, produce similar appearances, which they 

21* 



246 ' THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

termed stygmates sanglant ! but when the statements 
reached them of blood oozino; throuo;h the wounds 
painted on a picture, and at the command of a mere 
mortal, they confessed that science could not afford a 
satisfactory explanation of the phenonenon. 

" The affair now assumed sufficient importance to 
attract the attention of the government, when M. 
Grave, the under prefect of the department, M. Guie- 
lihut, judge d'instruction, M. Jacques, substitut du 
procureur de la republique, and other civil and military 
officers were dispatched to investigate the correctness 
of the representations. Even Monsignor, the Arch- 
bishop of Avignon, was summoned with the higher 
clergy of his diocese, to behold and verify the miracle. 
On the day appointed by the saint for her perform- 
ance, these great civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries ar- 
rayed in the costume and insignia of office, attended 
her invitation, together with thousands of the curious 
and devout from every part of the province ; and to 
prove that no design was entertained of imposing on 
the credulity of mankind, the painting, at the com- 
mand of his grace the archbishop, was removed from 
its place over the high altar, when lo ! to the astonish- 
ment of the awe-struck multitude, the back, which 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN RELIGION. 247 

might have contained some machinery for carrying on 
the imposture, disclosed a numerous colony of spiders. 
Still the blood continued to flow, as fast as his grace 
and the prefect wiped it away with thin cambric hand- 
kerchiefs from the hands, feet, and side of the figure — 
and what a value did these handkerchiefs acquire ! 
They were immediately cut into shreds, and trans- 
mitted into every part of France. The public autho- 
rities and the clergy were satisfied, the spectators were 
satisfied, and the archbishop preached an eloquent ser- 
mon suitable to so great an occasion ; and, in order 
that every thing should be done in due form, the pre- 
fect and all the high dignitaries aflSxed their names 
and seals of high office to a public document, attesting 
the truth of this most mysterious phenomenon, which 
was forthwith dispatched to Paris, and by means of the 
public press circulated throughout every country in 
Christendom. 

" Rose Tamisier was now at the very height of her 
fame. A pilgrimage to St. Saturnin became the fa- 
shion of the day. While the sale of tin medals bear- 
ing her effigy increased a thousandfold, she derived 
yet more substantial benefit from the jewelled crosses, 
and images of the Virgin set in diamonds, presented 



248 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

to her bj her numerous friends. The scientific men of 
France were puzzled ; chemical analysis proved that 
undoubtedly blood it was which flowed from the pic- 
ture, yet neither eye nor microscope could detect the 
smallest puncture in the canvass. 

" Nevertheless, a chemist of Apt, M. Eugene Colig- 
non, at length unmasked the impostor. With much 
labor and research, he discovered that human blood, 
disgorged by a leech, loses its fibrine, and might be 
made to penetrate the surface of a painting, and then 
issue forth in small globules, according to the quantity 
employed ; and as such blood does not coagulate for 
many hours, it would continue to flow from the pic- 
ture, however frequently wiped off, while a single drop 
remained. 

" In short, the miracle was imitated successfully by 
this gentleman, in presence of the public authorities 
and the most eminent scientific men of the country, 
and not a doubt remained on their minds that Rose 
Tamisier was an impostor, particularly when it was 
proved that she invariably insisted on being allowed 
to pass some time in solitary prayer in the chapel pre- 
vious to performing the miracle. The cheat having 
once become generally known, such a storm of public 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN RELIGION. 249 

indignation was raised as compelled the authorities to 
have the impostor arrested, and tried as such at Car- 
pentras, the chief town of the district ; but the jury, 
influenced, as it was believed, through the confessional, 
declared themselves incompetent to pronounce a ver- 
dict. The affair was, however, transferred to the as- 
sizes, at Nismes, where, about the middle of Novem- 
ber, 1851, after a long and patient investigation, aided 
by the laborious efforts of counsel on both sides, the 
saint was pronounced guilty of a fraudulent attempt 
to injure public morals and religion, and condemned 
to six months' imprisonment, with a fine of five hundred 
francs, and costs. 

"Since that time, nothing has been heard of 
Rose Tamisier from priest or bishop; but her life, 
written by the Abbe Andre, and containing no men- 
tion of Colignon's discovery, continues to be circulated 
among the peasantry, with whom she is still the saint 
of the marvellous cabbage and the bleeding picture. 
The Church of Rome may well boast of her own un- 
changeability, if she, in the midst of the nineteenth 
century, as in the midst of the ninth, continues the pa- 
troness of falsehood and deception ; and as long as 
there exists among the depraved powers of fallen hu- 



250 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Daan nature that unaccountable capability for deceit, 
and thirst for importance, which are so often met with 
in the most shallow and uncultivated minds, so long 
will instruments like Rose Tamisier be found for Rome's 
service. Surely, if Protestants had nothing else for 
which to bless the Reformation, the least earnest among 
them must feel thankful that, in the most remote of 
their parish churches, no such impious fraud or subtle 
mockery as that which we have detailed could be 
practised." 

So much for the Miracle of Modern Times. The 
story is very instructive. It suggests a number of 
profitable reflections. The upper classes of society in 
France, must be admitted to rank among the most 
enlightened people in the world. And yet they were 
completely carried away by this ridiculous imposture. 

May we not suppose that much of the same sort of 
imposture is carried on by the Roman Catholic priests 
in secret now, and more of it may be expected and in 
a more public way hereafter ? If the priests can 
break up the public school system, will not their whole 
system of superstition have a clear field for success. 
If Morraonism, a new delusion, could gain thousands 
of converts, may not the Roman Catholic religion with 



FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN RELIGION. 261 

its ancient traditions and its immense foreign influence, 
hope eventually to carry all before it ? 

This story of the miracle in France certainly favors 
this view of the matter. 

We here have an instance in which not only were 
the minds of the ignorant classes, so completely im- 
bued with the idea, that this woman was commissioned 
by God to assist the promulgation of the doctrines of 
the Church of Eome, but even those of a higher order 
of intelligence were brought to believe in her so-called 
mission ; men occupying the highest position in a so- 
cial point of view, assisted, by their example, in thus 
giving credence to the story so artfully conceived and 
illustrated. And thus it is, the Jesuits, by their cun- 
ning and artifices, so work upon the feelings of their 
subjects, as to prepare them to believe any thing, no 
matter how preposterous, to grasp at absolute power. 
In this enlightened country, a country blessed by its 
elevation above the power of despotism, where man 
has a right to " worship God according to the dictates 
of his own conscience,'' where civil and religious liberty, 
have united to place us on an enviable footing in 
contrast with the other nations of the earth, and 
where freedom to act and think is guaranteed ; here, 



252 - THE ENEMIES OE AMERICA UNMASKED. 

^here our Pilgrim fathers, driTen by persecutions at 
home, 

'* Left nnstain'd what" here •• they fcmid — 
Freedom to "worship God.*' 

Here it is that the Church of Eorae, not satisfied 
-vvith her failure in depriving us of the incalculable be- 
nefit of our free education system, in prohibiting the 
reading of the Holy '\^'ord of God in our common 
schools, and other acts of aggression, seeks to establish 
and compel obedience to the la^s of the Romish 
Church. 



1 



CHAPTER XIX. 

AGGRESSIONS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC PRELATES. 

It should be constantly borne in mind that in the 
earnest contest, recently commenced and now going 
on, between the native born and Protestant party and 
the Roman Catholic clergy, the latter are the aggressors. 
They attack our institutions, and seek to undermine 
the foundations of civil liberty. This is the same dirty 
work which they have occupied themselves with in all 
ages and countries since the days of Hildebrand. They 
cannot keep their hands from it. They follow it even 
here, in this land of freedom, with a perseverance and 
audacity that is really astounding. They cannot bo 
made to understand that the air of this country is un- 

22 (253) 



254 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

wholesome for despots. They not only assail the free 
institutions of Protestants, but they persecute even 
Eoman Catholics themselves, whenever they exhibit 
the least disposition to assert their rights as free men 
in opposition to the tyranny and rapacity of their 
prelates. 

They cannot learn that America is and must be the 
land of freedom, both civil and religious. Indeed, as 
a cotemporary* justly observes. 

There is a certain class of persons in this world 
who never learn any thing. Insensible to the expan- 
sive spirit of the age — blind as bats to the mighty 
changes for the elevation of man's position in the so- 
cial and political scale, which are going on all around 
and about them, they grope on in the darkness of the 
past, with a contempt of consequences which belies the 
hypothesis that they are imbued with any of the vita- 
lity, energy, intelligence, or quick perceptions, cha- 
racteristic of the American mind. These owls never 
look forward to the future. The eleventh or twelfth 
century, when priestcraft predominated throughout 
continental Europe, and the minds of men, so saturated 
with ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, that the 
^ New York Express. 



AGGRESSIONS OF THE CATHOLIC PRELATES. 255 

times well deserve the name given to tliem by the his- 
torians of that period — the Dark Ages — the eleventh 
or twelfth century, we say, is the epoch to which, if 
these fossils were permitted to have their way, they 
would roll back this glorious nineteenth century of 
ours. They come of the same school that put poor 
Galileo to death, for venturing to declare that the 
" world did move" — and it is never to be doubted, that 
had they the power, (as heaven be thanked, they have 
not) the Galileos of this day would share the same 
fate — for the same offence. 

These blind men, whereof we speak, have their most 
fitting representative in the Romish foreign born, fo- 
reign educated (if educated at all) hierarchy, which is 
setting itself up on this side of the Atlantic as a " power 
in the state." They have begun a struggle with the 
people of this country, of a daring and most desperate 
character. But had they only half the cunning and 
craft that the disciples of Ignatius Loyola have often 
exhibited in Europe, when they had a peculiar purpose 
to accomplish — these alien emissaries of an Italian 
potentate would not have thrown down the glove here 
so soon. They should have waited awhile — before 
provokhig a contest, in which, thus far they have been 



256 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

"worsted at every step. They have failed in prostitut- 
ing oui' public school system to the extent they had 
desired and striven for ; they have failed in their ne- 
farious assumption of the right to stop the mouths of 
men who choose to preach in public places, unless their 
preaching happened to accord vrith their own dogmas 
and belief; they have failed in the no less nefarious 
endeavor to procure homage, or respect even, from free 
born American citizens, for their imported magnates 
of the Bedini brand ; they have failed, signally failed, 
in their attempts to exercise a territorial jurisdiction 
in this state, by taking the church temporalities from 
the laity, and placing them under their own personal 
control. They have failed in a good many other things 
within the few years past, — and failed so thoroughly 
that one would naturally imagine they would be dis- 
posed to pause awhile, before contemplating new inno- 
vations upon the rights of the people. But no. The 
great difficulty with this brazen faced Hierarchy is this : 
they can never forget that they are not in Eome — the 
home of the most galling spiritual and political despo- 
tisms on the face of the earth. They cannot be made 
to realize that they are in the United Sates of xlmerica, 
living, moving, and having their being among men 



AGGRESSIONS OF THE CATHOLIC PRELATES. 257 

who are no more accustomed to clerical dictation than 
they are to civil despotism, coming from abroad. As 
they have rebelled against the one, — so depend upon 
it — they will never put up with the other. Especially 
as the world is just now having gratifying proof that 
a man's religion, — his duty to his God, — is now ac- 
knowledged, by American Catholics, as well as Ame- 
rican Protestants, to be in no wise dependent upon, or 
subordinate to, any temporal power whatsoever, — 
whether that power sits on the seven hills of Rome, 
or in the archiepiscopal palaces of its emissaries else- 
where. The Catholics of the American Republic have 
often, of late, demonstrated practically, this great truth, 
which, in due time, will not be lost with their brethren 
in other lands. 

The newest manifestation of this stubborn disposi- 
tion on the part of the Romish Hierarchy, here, not 
to learn any thing from experience, — especially not to 
learn personal prudence, and a becoming deference to 
public sentiment — the sentiment even of their own 
flock, — is found in a difference which has arisen 
between the congregation of a Romish Church, at 
Middletown, Connecticut, and the Bishop that governs 
that Diocese. The facts, as we gather them from the 

22* 



258 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Hartford Courant^ may be stated briefly thus : — Rev. 
John Brady, has been for ten years the beloved pastor 
of the church in question. He is nephew to Father 
Brady of Hartford, and, like his uncle, had rendered 
himself beloved by his flock, and respected by the 
whole Protestant community for his usefulness. Like 
him, by his zeal and energy he gathered a large society 
and erected a spacious and elegant church edifice. But, 
in an unfortunate hour for him, he remonstrated against 
the proceedings of the Bishop which had not only sent 
his uncle to the grave, but had persecuted him while 
lying in it. He had committed the offence which a 
Romish Bishop, in his tyranny, never forgives — he 
had, like a free man, and a free citizen of this land of 
liberty, opposed the wishes of his superior, and must 
be punished. On Friday last. Bishop O'Rielly en- 
tered Middletown with a new priest for the church — 
compelled Mr. Brady either to resign his place or be 
silenced, and inducted the new man in his room. The 
members of the congregation, of course, clung to their 
old pastor, but what does the Church of Rome care 
for the wishes of the people ? or what respect has a 
Romish Bishop for the free institutions around him ? 
A correspondent of the New Haven Palladium^ 



AGGRESSIONS OF THE CATHOLIC PRELATES. 259 

writing, on Sunday morning, gives us the following 
account : 

This morning, early, having occasion to pass the 
church, I saw that some one had nailed up the doors, 
and on the principal entrance was posted the follow- 
ing — '' Let no man take this down till the Bishop 
gives a reason for rem^oving Mr. Brady from his be- 
loved congregation. Let no man dare to,'' 

As the hour for morning prayers drew nigh, the 
people began to gather around in little knots discuss- 
ing among themselves the propriety of such proceed- 
ings. Soon the new priest, Rev. Mr. Manion, arrived, 
and after viewing the scene and tearing the paper off 
the door, wished to know the cause of it. An elderly 
man in the crowd calmly told him in substance, that 
the course the Bishop had seen fit to take was entirely 
against their wishes, for they did not want to part 
with Rev. Mr. Brady, as he had been so long with 
them and built them up as a society to what they Avere, 
and that to remove him without giving a reason to the 
congregation, they considered an outrage to their 
feelings. 

Rev. Mr. Manion replied that he knew nothing 
about that — that he was there by the Bisliop's orders, 



260 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

and if a reason was wanted, it was Rev. Mr. Brady's 
business to see to it, — and further, tliat it was not in- 
cumhent iipon tlie Bishop to give any reason to them, 
that he was delegated hg Almighty Grod to take charge 
of their souls, and if he should give a reason for his 
actions he would he no longer Bishop. 

Delectable doctrine Mr. Manion ! But a few 
more of these Father Brady and Buffalo Church cases, 
and it needs no ghost to come and tell that, — without 
any suggestion for advice from other quarters, — a 
storm may gather among the Catholics themselves, 
which will scatter to the winds the arrogant despotism 
which, holding its commission from abroad, seeks to 
hold them in chains, civil, political and spiritual. The 
foreign Bishops will have to give way to American 
Bishops. It will come to that in the end. 

Since writing the above, we find a notice of fresh 
tyrannical aggressions by the Catholics on Catholics, 
and we quote it as the latest. (May, 1855.) 

The Savannah papers state that a serious discussion 
is now in progress in that city, similar to the move- 
ments for independence of late years undertaken by 
the Roman Catholics in Buffalo, Hartford, New Ha- 
ven, and in several other places in the north and west. 



AGGRESSIONS OF THE CATHOLIC PRELATES. 261 

A writer of their own chruch comes out in a bold and 
lengthy article, and exposes the tyranny of their late 
Bishop Gartland, andthe assumptions and falsifications 
of the present incumbent of the cathedral. He charges 
the late Bishop with having taken from them their 
chartered rights obtained from the Legislature, and 
of setting aside their very constitution and by-laws. 
"- He changed our mode of government, took the reins 
completely into his own hands, and not a member of the 
Catholic Church had a voice in the disbursements of 
the revenues accruing to the Church for the mainte- 
nance of the Bishop and his Priests, or the salaried 
lay officers of the Church." The congregation was 
too Catholic to demur openly, although silently cha- 
grined on the occasion. Georgia must legislate on this 
subject and give American Catholics the right to manage 
their own affairs vv^ithout the intervention of any foreign 
priests. 

New York has legislated on this subject ; and it is 
a curious circumstance that the legislative proceed- 
ings, intended to restore to trustees the property 
hitherto held in fee by priests, should have brought 
out the fact that Archbishop Hughes holds the entire 
money power of the church in New York, having pro- 



262 ' THE ENEMIES OE AMERICA UXMASKED. 

pertT in his hands amounting to several millions of 
dollars. As General Jackson thought the institutions 
of the country endangered bj the money power of the 
United States Bank, what may we not expect from 
the exertion of a similar money power by Roman 
Catholic priests ? They have no board of directors to 
overlook their proceedings and check their intrigues. 
Such a state of things should alarm Protestants, since 
it has already spread a dire alarm among the laity of 
the Roman Catholics themselves. If the faithful are 
tyrannized over, oppressed and persecuted what may 
we poor heretics expect " one of these days."' 



CHAPTER XX. 

HOW JESUITS OPERATE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 

We have in the early part of this volume given a 
general account of the Jesuits, as they appear in the 
pages of history. To bring a sense of the danger? 
arising from the operations of these propagandists, 
more directly to our readers, we will advert to their 
present character and operations in stimulating mis- 
chief among the people. An article in the Journal 
of Commerce^ attributed to Professor Morse, thus dis- 
closes their schemes. He says, 

I have shown that a society (the '^ St. Leopold Foun- 
dation") is organized in a foreign absolute government, 
having its central direction in the capital of that go- 

(263) 



264 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

vernment at Vienna, under the patronage of the Em- 
peror of Austria, and the other despotic rulers^ — a so- 
ciety for the purpose of spreading Popery in this coun- 
try. Of this fact there is no doubt. This St. Leopold 
Foundation has its ramifications through the whole of 
the Austrian empire. It is not a small private asso- 
ciation, but a great and extensive combination. It 
embraces in its extent, as shown by their own docu- 
ments, not merely the Austrian empire, Hungary, and 
Italy, but it includes Piedmont, Savoy, and Catholic 
France ; it embodies the civil and ecclesiastical autho- 
rities of these countries. And is such an extensive 
combination in foreign countries, for the avowed pur- 
pose of operating in this country, (no matter for what 
purpose,) so trivial an affair, that we may safely dis- 
miss it with a sneer ? Have these foreign rulers so 
much sympathy with our system of government, that 
we may trust them safely to meddle with it, in any 
way ? Are they so impotent in combination as to ex- 
cite in us no alarm ? May they send money, and 
agents, and a system of government wholly at vari- 
ance with our own, and spread it through all our bor- 
ders with impunity from our search, because it is nick- 
named Religion ? There was a time when the Ame- 



HOW JESUITS OPERATE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 265 

rican sensibilities were quick on the subject o^ foreign 
interference. What has recently deadened them ? 

Let us examine the operations of this Austrian So- 
ciety, for it is hard at work all around us ; yes, here 
in this country, from one end to the other, at our very 
doors, in this city. From a machinery of such a charac- 
ter and power, we shall doubtless be able to see already 
some effect. With its head-quarters at Vienna, under 
the immediate direction and inspection of Metternich, 
the well-known great managing general of the diplo- 
macy of Europe^ it makes itself already felt through 
the Republic. Its emissaries are here. And who are 
these emissaries ? They are Jesuits, This society of 
men, after exerting their tyranny for upwards of two 
hundred years, at length became so formidable to the 
world, threatening the entire subversion of all social 
order, that even the Pope, whose devoted subjects they 
are, and must be, by the vow of their society, was com- 
pelled to dissolve them. 

They had not been suppressed, however, for fifty 
years, before the waning influence of Popery and Des- 
potism required their useful labors, to resist the light 
of Democratic liberty, and the Pope (Pius VII.) simul- 
taneously with the formation of the Holy Alliance, re- 

23 



266 THE EXEALLES OP AMERICA UXMASKED. 

vived the order of the Jesuits in all their power. From 
their tow of " u?ijualined submission to the Sovereign 
Pontiff^'' they have been appropriately called the 
Pope's Bo^iy Gruard. It should be known, that Aus- 
trian influence elected tTie preseiit Pope; his body 
guard are, therefore, at the service of Austria, and 
these are the soldiers that the Leopold Society has 
sent to this country, and they are the agents of this 
society, to execute its designs, whatever these designs 
may be. And do Americans need to be told what 
Jesuits are ? K any are ignorant, let them inform 
themselves of their history without delay ; no time is 
to be lost : their workings are before you in every day's 
events : they are a secret society, a sort of Masonic 
order, with superadded features of revolting odious- 
ness, and a thousand times more dangerous. They are 
not merely priests, or priests of one religious creed; 
they are merchants, and lawyers, and editors, and 
men of any profession, having no outward badge, (in 
this country) by which to be recognized; they are 
about LQ all your society. They can assume any cha- 
racter, that of angels of light, or ministers of darkness, 
to accomplish their one great end, the service upon 
which they are sent, whatever that service may be. 



HOW JESUITS OPERATE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 267 

'' They are all educated meiij prepared, and sworn to 
start at any moment^ and in any direction^ and for any 
service, commanded by the general of their order, 
bound to no family, community, or country, by the 
ordinary ties which bind men ; and sold for life to the 
cause of the Roman Pontiff." 

These are the men, at this moment, ordered to Ame- 
rica. And can they do nothing, Americans, to de- 
range the free workings of your democratic institu- 
tions ? Can they not, and do they not, fan the slight- 
est embers of discontent into a flame, those thousand 
little diflferences which must perpetually occur in any 
society, into riot, and quell its excess among their 
own people as it suits their policy and the establishment 
of their own control? Yes, they can be the aggressors, 
and contrive to be the aggrieved. They can do the 
mischief, and manage to be publicly lauded for their 
praiseworthy forbearance and their suffering patience. 
They can persecute, and turn away the popular indig- 
nation, ever roused by the cry of persecution from 
themselves, and make it fall upon their victims. They 
can control the press in a thousand secret ways. They 
can write under the signature of '^ Whig" to-day, and 
if it suits their turn, ''Tory" to-morroAv. They can 



268 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

be democrat to-day, and Aristocrats to-morrow. They 
can out- American Americans in admiration of Ameri- 
can institutions to-day, and ^'condemn them as unfit 
for any people" to-morrow. These are the men that 
Austria has sent here, that she supplies with money, 
with whom she keeps up an active correspondence, and 
whose officers (the Bishops) are passing back and forth 
between Europe and America, doubtless to impart that 
information orally which would not be so safe com- 
mitted to writing. 

Is there no danger to the Democracy of the country 
from such formidable foes arrayed against it? Is 
Metternich its friend ? Is the Pope its friend ? Are 
his official documents, now daily put forth. Democratic 
in their character ? 

Oh, there is no danger to the Democracy, for those 
most devoted to the Pope, the Roman Catholics, espe- 
cially the Irish Catholics, are all on the side of De- 
mocracy ! Yes ; to be sure they are on the side of 
Democracy. They are just where I should look for 
them. Judas Iscariot joined with the true disciples. 
Jesuits are not fools. They would not startle our 
slumbering fears, by bolting out their monarchical de- 
signs directly in our teeth, and by joining the opposing 



HOW JESUITS OPERATE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 269 

ranks, except so far as to cover their designs. This is 
a Democratic countryj and the Democratic party is 
and ever must be the strongest party, unless ruined 
by traitors and Jesuits in the camp. Yes ; it is in the 
ranks of Democracy I should expect to find them, and 
for no good purpose, be assured. Every measure of 
Democratic policy in the least exciting will be pushed 
to ultraism^ so soon as it is introduced for discussion. 
Let every real Democrat guard against the common 
Jesuitical artifice of tyrants, an artifice which there is 
much evidence to believe is practising against them at 
this moment, an artifice, wliich^ if not heeded^ will 
s\irely he the ruin of Democracy ; it is founded on the 
well known principle that " extremes meet'' The writer 
has seen it pass under his own eyes in Europe. When 
in despotic governments popular discontent, arising 
from the intolerable oppressions of the tyrants of the 
people, has manifested itself by popular outbreakings, 
to such a degree as to endanger the throne, and the 
people seemed prepared to shove their masters from 
their horses, and are likely to mount, and seize the 
reins themselves ; then, the popular movement, unma- 
nageable any longer by resistance, is pushed to the 
extreme. The passions of the ignorant and vicious 

23* 



/ 



270 -TRE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

are excited to outrage by pretended friends of tiie 
people. Anarchy ensues ; and then the mass of the 
people, who are always lovers of order and quiet, 
unite at once in support of the strong arm of force for 
protection ; and despotism, perhaps, in another, but 
preconcerted shape, resumes its iron reign. Italy and 
Germany, are furnishing examples every day. If an 
illustration is wanted on a larger scale, look at France 
in her late Republican revolution, and in her present 
relapse into despotism. 

He who would prevent you from mounting his horse, 
has two ways of thwarting your designs. If he finds 
efforts to rise too strong for his resistance, he has but 
to add a little more impulse to them, and he shoves 
you over on the other side. In either case you are on 
the ground. 



CHAPTER XXL 

HOW THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH TREATS MEN OF 
SCIENCE. 

In all ages the Church of Rome, says a recent 
writer, has been an opponent to scientific progress. 
Light, from whatever source derived, it has always 
been her policy to shun. During the dark ages, which 
were the periods of her greatest prosperity, she main- 
tained a long and bitter struggle against the advance- 
ment of philosophical study. At a later period, as 
substitutes for science, she introduced her relics, her 
charms, and her amulets. Disease was not to be cured 
by medicine, but by a bone, a tooth, or a finger-nail 
of some monkish saint. Fire was not to be extin- 
guished by water, but by charms wrought by relics. 

(271) 



272 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Men did not accomplish any thing by their perseve- 
rance, but by virtue of an amulet suspended around 
their necks. Whole cargoes of those spurious reme- 
dies were exported (and are to this day) from Italy 
into Roman Catholic countries. Relics were said to 
have an infallible power in every emergency, in every 
danger, and in every undertaking, and science was 
therefore unnecessary ; it was condemned, indeed, as 
inculcating infidelity in the sacred power of relics. No 
trade was so profitable as that of a dealer in such 
trash; and an "Exhibition of Science and Art," as 
tolerated and sanctioned by Rome in medieval times, 
would have been a remarkable sight, and a sad expo- 
sition of the weakness and credulity of mankind. 

Before the rise of scholastic philosophy, the giant 
Science was indeed powerless ; his ancient strength 
had departed from him, and the church held him cap- 
tive by her wily arts and her terrible frowns. The 
philosophy of the schools was an attempt to harmonize 
the absurdities and false doctrines of the papacy with 
the philosophy of Aristotle, and we have a curious in- 
stance of the inconsistent policy of Rome in her treat- 
ment of the writings of this ancient author. A pro- 
vincial synod, held at Paris in 1209, ordered the 



ROME'S TREATMENT OF SCIENCE. 273 

metaphysical writings of the philosopher to be burnt. 
Innocent III. also forbade any to study his works, and 
several succeeding popes sanctioned these prohibitory 
measures. In 1261, however, Urban IV. in spite of 
the disapproval of his '' infallible" predecessors in the 
papal chair, issued a command to Thomas Aquinas 
directing him to translate and write a commentary on 
the works of Aristotle ; but Pope Clement IV. in 
the first year of his pontificate, renewed through his 
legate the original prohibition ; yet a few years after, 
the philosophy of Aristotle again became the favorite 
study of the monks, and received the approbation of 
the church. That book, so often suppressed and ana- 
thematised by infallible popes, became, at the close of 
the thirteenth century, the text-book of monastic ra- 
tionalism, and from it the monks endeavored to find 
arguments to prop all the absurd doctrines of popery. 
With this design in view, science, in the hands of the 
schoolmen, became distorted into a marvellous system 
of speculation. It is doubtful whether they under- 
stood their own writings ; it is certain that few can 
understand them now. Metaphysics were employed 
to explain supernatural mysteries, or to solve some 
idle enigma of an unrestrained imagination ; physics 



274 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

were studied and applied to the elucidation of miracles ; 
science was tortured to bear reluctant evidence to 
the traditional dogmas of Rome, and all the keen and 
subtle theories of intention, mental reservation, deadly 
and venial sins, transubstantiation, etc., were invented 
or maintained by scholastic philosophy. Science was 
not allowed to disprove any dogma of the church ; ra- 
ther than a proj&table error should be overthrown, it 
was her policy to overthrow or suppress an unprofitable 
truth. Science was only tolerated so far as it would 
by unnatural distortions appear to support error. 

This abstruse system served a purpose which the 
medieval church ever regarded as important ; it cast 
an appearance of difficulty around science, and tended 
to sustain that monopoly in learning which the monks 
had enjoyed for so many ages. It formed an impene- 
trable barrier between the priests and the laity — be- 
tween the learned and ignorant — and rendered all 
attempts at encroachment on the part of the latter 
next to impossible. Every effort was made to inspire 
the unlearned with a reverential awe for the philosophy 
of the schools ; and its professors were designated by 
the ostentatious appellations of Profundus, Irrefraga- 
ble, Mellifluous, Angelic, or Seraphic. 



Rome's treatment of science. 275 

Any attempt to dissipate this system of technicali- 
ties, and to render science more serviceable to the in- 
terests of humanity, met with the immediate displea- 
sure of the church. She condemned all scientific 
works which did not make science conducive to her 
advancement, or which contained principles or discove- 
i*ies opposed to the learned expositions of the fathers. 
All science was expected to harmonize with school and 
patristic divinity, or it fell beneath a papal interdic- 
tion. Honorious III. condemned the writings of Ere- 
gena to be burnt, and excommunicated all who dared 
to read or even to possess a copy of his book, " Divi- 
sione Naturae." 

Virgilius, bishop of Saltsburgh, was denounced as a 
heretic for asserting the existence of antipodes. 

The old scientific theories were palpably erroneous ; 
but the church forbade any to set them right, and no 
advance or alteration could be made unless the desired 
change was first carefully examined and proved ortho- 
dox, or was found to offer convenient aid to support 
opinions pleasing to the policy of Rome. Thus know- 
ledge, disguised and mutilated, became imprisoned 
within the cloister ; its votaries were divested of all 



276 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

freedom of the mind, compelled by fire and the sword 
to adopt contradictions for demonstrated truths. 

Slander was a common weapon employed by the 
church to suppress or discourage scientific investiga- 
tions. Students were denounced as magicians and 
sorcerers. Even as early as the time of Bede, philo- 
sophical studies were looked upon with suspicion. 
That venerable author, in an epistle which accompa- 
nies his treatise on " Thunder and its Signification," ex- 
presses his sense of the danger of the task, and en- 
treats the protection of Herenfrid, at whose command 
he had undertaken it, from the malignity of those who 
would call him a magician for engaging in such studies. 
If one so honored as Bede was thus in fear, how great 
must have been the danger of less influential students ! 
Gerbert, Girald, Michael Scot, Grosteste, and Roger 
Bacon were all accused of magic. 

Roger Bacon was one of the most remarkable men 
of the thirteenth century. He was both a prophet and 
a martyr to science. He was a Franciscan friar, 
having assumed the grey tunic of his order in the vain 
hope of obtaining opportunities for study. Although 
with them in body, he was not with them in mind; 
instead of upholding ignorance and superstition, it was 



home's treatment of science. 277 

his aim to dispel them, and to argue against the pre- 
judices of his age towards science. He endeavored to 
show that philosophy, was not opposed to Bible truth, 
and, as a necessary consequence, he incurred the 
frowns and persecutions of the church. " The prelates 
and Friars," he writes, " are starving me in prison, 
nor will they suffer any to speak with me, fearing lest 
my writings should meet the eyes of any other than 
the pope and themselves." His works were suppressed 
and cast from the libraries of his own order. He was 
called magician by his intolerant enemies, yet we find 
him protesting "that it is a sinful practice when 
wicked men, despising the rules of philosophy, irra- 
tionally attempt to call up evil spirits." 

But it was to the interest of Rome to keep the 
people dark ; science was the great antagonist to the 
theory of miraculous power. " Without doubt," wrote 
Bacon, alluding to miracles and charms, "there 
is nothing in these days of this kind but what is 
deceitful, dubious, and irrational; for instance, if the 
nature of the load stone, whereby it draws iron to it, 
were not discovered, some one or other who had 
thereby a mind to cozen the people would so go about 
his business as lest any bystander should discover the 

24 



278 - THE ENEMIES OE AMERICA UXMASKED. 

vrork of attraction should be natural, to cast figures o^ 
mutter forth some charm!"' Such language was 
deadly to medieval science, and to the profitable ex- 
ercise of monkish skill. Jerome de Esculo. general of 
the Franciscan order, condemned him to prison, and 
the Pope immediately ratified the sentence. 

For ten long and dreary years Bacon ^ras incarce- 
rated in the dungeon of the convent of ^vhich he was a 
member. He died at the old age of seventy-nine, 
leaving among his cotemporaries the name of a magi- 
cian, but to posterity the reputation of a philosopher. 
Many instances of persecution on the part of the 
church towards lovers of science are recorded. 

About the year 1316, Peter d'Apona a learned man 
of Padua, was sentenced by the inquisition to be burnt 
to death as a magician ; and about the same time, 
Arnold de Villa Nova, a grey-haii'ed old man in the 
eightieth year of his age, was also burnt at Padua as 
an "accused necromancer,'' for having engaged in 
these forbidden studies. Henry of Arragon, Marquis 
of Yillena, a poet and philosopher, who died at Ma- 
drid in the year 143-i, was accused of magic, and 
would probably have suffered the same fate but for his 
influence among the powerful. At his death, however, 



Rome's treatment of science. 279 

inquisition testified its hatred to science by commit- 
ting liis library to the flames. 

The invention of printing and the reformation of the 
sixteenth century at last broke down the barriers of 
scholastic philosophy. The human mind awakened 
from its lethargy, and men out of the cloister ventured 
to lift the veil with which priestly power had hid truth 
from the "vulgar laity." The results were disas- 
torous to a system built on error and falsehood, and 
Rome, impatient and furious, sent out organized in- 
quisitors and oppressors of the human mind. Modern 
science was denounced as heretical. The church not 
only claimed to be the expounder of Scripture, but to 
be the whole expounder of science too. 

Philosophers were again regarded as magicians and 
heretics, and excommunication and the fagot were 
employed by the zealous champions of intellectual 
darkness to annihilate both authors and their writings. 
Ignorance might insure personal safety, but knowledge 
incurred danger to its professor ; and the church 
became so jealous of any signs of an inquiring spirit 
among the laity, that to be learned was thought here- 
tical. Cypriano de Valera, writing in the sixteenth 
century, tells us that it was a common proverb in 



280 -THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Spain, -syhen speaking of a studious person, to say, he 
is so learned that he is in danger of becoming a 
Lutheran. 

The treatment of Galileo by the church of Rome is 
a memorable instance of her opposition to scientific 
progress. Study had revealed to the mind of the phi- 
losopher the truth of the earth's motion, and led him 
to adhere to the Copernican doctrine. Fearlessly he 
proclaimed and advocated his opinions, but his views 
were opposed to the patristic notions of science. The 
Dominicans, ever the evil genius to scientific discovery, 
raised an alarm, and the church denounced the doc- 
trines of Galileo as both heretical and dangerous. 

Galileo defended his opinions with masterly power 
and argument and endeavored to prove that the testi- 
mony of Holy Writ was in perfect harmony with his 
doctrine. This magnified his crime in the eyes of the 
church ; it was deemed an evidence of gross presump- 
tion for a layman to search into the vista of science 
with the lamp of Divine truth. 

Galileo was cited before the inquisition, and a con- 
gregation of cardinals compelled him to renounce his 
opinions. 

Years elapsed, and again Galileo issued out as the 



ROME'S TREATMENT OF SCIENCE. 281 

cliampion of science. In the year 1632 he published 
his " Dialogue on the Systems of Ptolemy and Coper- 
nicus/' in which he undertook to prove that the sun 
was certainly immoveablcj and that the earth revolved 
round the sun. The work excited universal attention, 
and Galileo was again summoned before the inquisition 
at Rome, and condemned to imprisonment. Seven car- 
dinals signed a decree, declaring that '' To say that the 
sun is in the centre, and absolutely fixed, and without 
local motion, is an absurd proposition, false in philo- 
sophy, and even heretical. To say that the earth is 
not placed in the centre of the universe, but that it 
moves, and has even a diurnal motion, is an absurd 
proposition, false in philosophy, and an error in 
faith." 

So much for the infallibility of the church in mat- 
ters of philosophy ; yet some even in our own day will 
not believe the revelations of science, because not sanc- 
tioned by patristic theology : they cling with the most 
eager tenacity to the old world science of the medi- 
eval monks, look dismally at the spread of knowledge 
among the people, and try to oppose with their feeble 
voice the light bursting upon us from all the avenues 
of truth. A modern Roman Catholic archbishop, in 

24* 



282 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

his eagerness for orthodox science, has ventured to de- 
nounce the doctrines of Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton 
as heretical, and testified his adherence to the scho- 
lastic theory that the sun travels round the earth ! 

These facts speak for themselves, and ought to be re- 
membered at a time when Dr. Wiseman has endea- 
vored to assume for his church the hitherto unheard- 
of characters of a patron and a friend of science. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

HOW THE CHUECH OF ROME REWARDS VICE AND IMMO- 
RALITY. A PATTERN CARDINAL. 

Any one, who is familiar with the leading facts of ~ 
modern history, will hardly require to be told that the 
Roman Catholic Church not only overlooks and tole- 
rates the grossest vices in her members, so long as 
they remain devoted to her interests and obedient to 
her tyranny, but that she often gives to the most vi- 
cious and projfligate men her highest ecclesiastical 
offices. A summary history of her openly dissolute 
popes and cardinals would fill volumes. We will de- 
tain our readers with only a single specimen. 

(283) 



284 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

A recent writer,"^ thus describes the character of 
Cardinal Dubois, and the effects of his political admi- 
nistration in the unfortunate kingdom of France. 

Guilliaume Dubois was the son of an apothecary at 
the little town of Prives, and spent his youth in carry- 
ing pill-boxes and clysters to his father's patients. 
Having studied for the Church, he was about to receive 
holy orders, when he ran away with a servant girl, and 
apparently destroyed his prospects for life. After a 
year or two of connubial felicity, however, he grew 
tired of his wife, left her, and went to Paris, where 
he was fortunate enough to fall in with M. St. Lau- 
rent, the tutor of the Regent — then Duke of Chartres. 

By this gentleman, young Dubois — who styled him- 
self the Abbe Dubois — was employed to give lessons 
to his pupil, and St. Laurent dying soon after, the 
apothecary's son obtained the vacant post. He was 
well suited to the young Duke. Possessed of vast 
learning, he was a still greater proficient in vice ; 
nothing came amiss to him, from a discussion on the 
merits of Cicero and Corneille to a 2^^^^^ Bouper a 
quatre in the faubourg. The Duchess of Orleans ad- 
mitted that, at first, he '' assumed the tone of an honest 
In Harper's Magazine. 



A PATTERN CAEDINAL. 285 

man so well that she took him for one/' but soon cor- 
rected her opinion. " The fellow," says this penetrat- 
ing woman, " believes in nothing; he is a rogue and a 
scoundrel ; he has the appearance of a fox creeping 
from its hole to steal a chicken." He was fox enough 
to see through and through the Duke, and soon mas- 
tered him completely. 

Through life Philip never withdrew his confidence 
from the unprincipled Abbe. When the former be- 
came Regent, the latter took office as confidential mi- 
nister, and soon controlled the whole administration. 
His public labors were prodigious; full twelve hours 
a day he was in his cabinet, receiving secretaries and 
embassadors, dictating dispatches, digesting the day's 
business for the Regent, and exercising a minute super- 
intendence over every branch of the public service. 
The reward he sought for his unparalleled devotion to 
his master's interests was rank. 

Cardinals took precedence of the highest nobles at 
court : Dubois resolved to be a Cardinal. There was 
some trifling difficulties in the way. Though nomi- 
nally an Abbe, he had never taken holy orders ; he 
had a wife living ; he was an avowed infidel ; and he 
had openly led a life of glaring profligacy. It must 



286 -THE EXEMIES OF AMERICA UXMASKED. 

not be supposed that all the dignitaries of the Church 
of that day were profligates, or infidels, or married 
men, or laymen; there were several orthodox Christians 
and respectable men among them ; but certain it is 
that Dubois had no trouble in obtaining, in the course 
of a few days, the several orders of sub-deacon, deacon, 
priest, bishop, and archbishop. 

The next step was more dijSScult. Though half a 
dozen kings supported Dubois's claims, the Pope re- 
fused to send him the hat, and the ambitious schemer 
waited till Clement died. When the Conclave met to 
choose his successor, Dubois managed matters just as 
our political leaders do at primary elections. With 
all the money that could be raised by the French trea- 
sury, the Abbe de Tencin, a young man whose sister 
enjoyed Dubois's protection, was sent to Rome to buy 
up the votes. He succeeded so well that Cardinal 
Conti, having given a written pledge to bestow the 
next vacant hat on Dubois, was elected Pope. But 
when the time came to fulfil his bargain, his Holiness 
demanded more money. Dubois indignantly referred 
to his written promise ; the Pope replied by sending 
the hat to his brother. Dubois was finally compelled 



A PATTERN CARDINAL. 287 

to accede to his avaricious demands, and a few thousand 
Louis secured the long-coveted rank. 

Having attained the highest pinnacle of power and 
consideration. Cardinal Dubois began to retaliate on 
the nobility for the slights he had formerly suffered 
at their hands. He took delight in insulting the whole 
body of the peers ; and even shoved a lady of rank 
out of his room, because she addressed him as " Mon- 
signeur" instead of ''Votre Eminence." His temper 
was ungovernable, and his language so coarse and 
profane, that he was ironically advised by his secre- 
tary to take an additional clerk, and give him, for sole 
employment, the duty of scolding and swearing at 
people. Notwithstanding these faults, he was so inde- 
fatigable in his office, that he was retained by Louis XV. 
and during the early reign of that monarch wielded 
supreme sway over France. The severity of his toils, 
added to the effects of dissipation, at length told upon 
his frame. Disease attacked him. Fearful of losing 
his power, he concealed it : and the pain made him 
more morose and passionate than ever. On his death- 
bed he swore at his doctors, ordered the priests to be 
turned out of the room, and died raving and cursing 
every one around him. 



288 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Under the regency of Philip of Orleans, and the 
ministry of Cardinal Dubois, the people of France en- 
dured miseries hardly to be described. The notorious 
swindle of the Scotchman, Law, which owed it success 
to the Regent's patronage, beggared the whole country. 
When we call to mind that the amount of money in 
circulation was much less than it is now, and was con- 
sequently more valuable in proportion to other com- 
modities, we can form some conception of the extent 
of disaster that must have been produced by the total 
failure of a bank which had issued paper to the 
amount of nine hundred millions of dollars. 

Reckless speculation had produced its usual fruits. 
Crowds of adventurers had flocked to Paris. Mer- 
chants, professional men, mechanics, deserted their 
business to dabble in shares. Everyday-life was at an 
end. While the bank lasted, the scenes that were wit- 
nessed resembled the ancient Saturnalia. When it 
fell, a despair that cannot be pictured overwhelmed 
the people. Robbers and assassins walked the streets 
in broad daylight. Men were murdered and thrown 
into the Seine, and no one seemed to notice it. In 
the general calamity life seemed to have lost its value. 
To complete the horrors of that awful period, the 



A PATTERN CARDINAL. 289 

plague suddenly appeared in Provence and Languedoc, 
and swept away the population by thousands. Those 
who fled died by the roadside ; those who staid died in 
their bed, on their chair, in their office. Famine fol- 
lowed ; and those who escaped the pestilence perished 
by hunger. It seemed as though a righteous Providence 
was smiting the nation for the crimes it tolerated in 
its rulers. 



25 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

HOW ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS INTERFERE IN AME- 
RICAN POLITICS. 

We have already adverted to this subject in an early- 
chapter of this work. But it is a subject that will 
bear re-examination and is not easily exhausted. Since 
that chapter was written, a great prelate of New York 
has returned from Europe, re-invigorated by an inter- 
view with His Holiness Pope Pius the Ninth ; and 
almost at the instant of his landing on our shores, he 
dashes into politics, commencing by writing and pub- 
lishing a dictatorial letter intending to overawe the 
legislature of New York, and prevent them from pass- 
ing a law to place church property in the hands of 

(290) 



HOW PRIESTS INTERFERE IN POLITICS. 291 

trustees. This was nothing new for Archbishop 
Hughes. He has often entered the political arena 
before ; and often got baffled and defeated, as in the 
present instance. Senator Brooks had declared in the 
course of debate in the senate, that the Archbishop 
was possessed of immense wealth. 

Archbishop Hughes returned from Rome, says a 
cotemporary, about the time the legislature adjourned. 
Senator Brooks came back to New York, when Arch- 
bishop Hughes, in a letter filled with sarcasm, denied 
the assertions regarding his wealth, and facetiously 
dared his assailant to proof. Mr. Brooks picked up the 
glove, and in the course of half-a-dozen letters, showed 
the world of Manhattan that his assertions were true. 
He had a warm friend in Mr. Register Doane, and 
the latter officer furnished him with copies of the con- 
veyances from time to time. It is proven that John 
Hughes^ Archbishop, ^c. is a very large landed pro- 
prietor. He asserts himself that he is a poor man. 
Then comes this strange fact, being poor, how came 
these conveyances (which are mostly for church pro- 
perty) to vest title in him in fee simple and absolute ? 
Why are not the conveyances made to the trustees of 
the churches? Either John Hughes owns all this 



292 5:iIE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

property, or he does not. If he owns it whence came 
the money to purchase it ? If he does not own it, 
where are the real owners ? — who are they ? — and 
where is the record evidence to destroy his naked 
ownership upon the registry? This is a dilemma, 
either horn of which is an awkward one for a clergy- 
man to hang upon. 

This controversy will have an immense effect upon 
the country at large. The clothing of the lamb has 
been stripped from the shoulders of the wolf. Ame- 
ricans perceive that there must be some cause for the 
recent upheavings of the masses against foreign in- 
fluence and religious subtlety — that there is truth in 
snme of the warnings against that influence of religion 
over politics which the latter has undertaken to de- 
stroy by the use of its own weapons. It is a great 
thing for the world at large, too, that the head of the 
Romish church in America turns out to have been a 
blackguard in disguise, to whom equivocation is a cha- 
ritable word for personal application. For drawing 
to a head a secret fester on the body politic of the 
country, Mr. Brooks should receive the thanks of the 
whole Union. When so subtle a man as Archbishop 
Hughes has failed in his conjunction of religion to 



a 



HOW PRIESTS INTERFERE IN POLITICS. 293 

politics, we may be very sure that his disgrace will 
deter other priests from soiling their robes with the 
dust of the partisan arena. 

But Archbishop Hughes is not the only Roman Ca- 
tholic priest who meddles with politics and exerts a di- 
rect and positive influence in elections and in legis- 
lative proceedings. We quote below a letter which 
shows that at least one other priest has had a hand in 
business of this sort. 

The following letter was published first in Pittsburg, 
in October, 1844. It was sent to that city by General 
Markle, by the hands of an attorney of that place : 

PRIEST FLANNAGAN'S LETTER. 

Letter from Rev, T. Flannagan to G-eneral Marhle^ 
post-marked '^ JEbenshurg^ April 5," and directed to 
''Hobstowriy Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. 

Ebensburg, April 4th, 1844. 

Greneral Markle, Esq,: 

Dear Sir, — Permit me to intrude upon you under 
my emergent circumstances. I presume you have 
already noticed the case of the Flannagans now, upon 
the expiration of two years, confined at Ebensburg, 



294 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

charged with murder. But, sir, after an industrious 
course of perseverance during the two recent sessions 
of the legislature, we have succeeded in having a new 
trial, which will take place immediately ; length of 
time, with heavy expenses, has reduced my circum- 
stances so much that I am now necessitated to call on 
my political friends. Then, sir, I wish to instruct you 
that my politics have been the cause of all. You can, 
if you doubt my veracity, ask General James Irvin, 
now a member of Congress, also Mr. James Linton, 
House of Representatives, what my influence is : it was 
ly my instrumentality the above named gentlemen were 
elected; if you assist me now I will warrant your elec- 
tion. I am a Catholic clergyman, and it is in my 
power to obtain for you a majority of the Pennsyl- 
vania Irish ; the Governor would not do any thing 
for me because I differed with him in politics. I will 
return to you whatever you will forward to me if you 
are not elected ; there is nothing in my power but I 
will do — money I want. Excuse my intrusion, being 
a stranger to you. 

Very respectfully, &c.. 

Rev. T. Flannagan. 



HOW PRIESTS INTERFERE IN POLITICS. 295 

Before taking leave, for the present, of the Koman 
Catholic Clergy, the reader will permit us to quote a 
paragraph from the Lockport Courier, and make a short 
commentary upon it. Speaking of the present contro* 
versy with Senator Brooks the editor says. 

Archbishop Hughes, in the present, instance, stands 
before the public in a plight which no man of respec- 
tability could covet. He commenced by charging 
Senator Brooks with falsehood, for stating that he 
(Bishop Hughes,) owned millions of property in his 
own name in New York city. This charge the Senator 
disproved, by quoting from the records conveyances of 
over forty pieces of property. Thus crowded to the 
wall, the Bishop tried to escape by the subterfuge that 
this was " the property of God," and he only the trus- 
tee. Senator Brooks meets this, by showing that Arch- 
bishop Hughes sells and conveys away this ''property 
of Qodr 

The layman has not only dispoved the charge of 
falsehood and sent it back to roost with him that made 
it, but has also set the Archbishop an example of good 
br-eeding in abstaining from the use of oiFensive epithets, 
and thus sends back to the same roosting place, all 
the Archbishop's expressions of contempt. 



296 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

Since the above was penned, we have received the 
New York papers of Friday morning, which contain a 
card from Archbishop Hughes, in which, he asks " for 
a suspension of ten days or two weeks" of the judg- 
ment of the public. Thus having abandoned the con- 
troversy and left Senator Brooks as a man unworthy 
of his notice, the Archbishop finds public opinion so 
strong aginst him, that he feels compelled to seek a 
modification of it. 

So much from the Lockport Courier. What we 
wish particularly to comment upon is the contemptable 
quibble of the Archbishop in calling his property " the 
property of God," just as if every man's property was 
not a trust held from the Supreme Giver of all good 
for the stewardship of which he must give account. 

Does the Archbishop expect the public to believe 
that Eoman Catholic priests are not accustomed to 
spend the money they receive from the people exactly 
as they please ? The Roman Catholic Church boasts 
that it is always the same. Has Archbishop Hughes 
less control over what he calls " God's property," than 
the Spanish and Italian prelates ? Does not the Arch- 
bishop of Havana spend his modest little salary of one 
hundred thousand dollars per annum as he pleases ? 



HOW PEIESTS INTEFERE IN POLITICS. 297 

Do not the Cardinals in Rome emulate their predeces- 
sors in luxury and loose living ? Have Cardinals in 
Rome ceased to indulge in pictures, statues, cameos 
and kept mistresses, bought with " God's property." 
If they have, we should like to see the poof of it. We 
have with us at this moment a friend just returned 
from a vist to Rome, who says that the Cardinals re- 
main as always, just like Archbishop Hughes, men of 
the world, gentlemen, of the highest breeding, politi- 
cians of the school of Machiavelli, arbiters in matters 
of taste and the fine arts, and stern denouncers of 
liberalism and popular education in every form. How 
they spend and always have spent the property of God, 
all the world knows. Whether American Catholics, 
after Senator Brook's disclosures are completed, will 
tolerate the same sort of management of God's pro- 
perty we shall see. Enough has already been disclo- 
sed to account for Hughes's anxiety to stop the inquiry 
and conceal the truth ; as well to account for his haste 
on his return from Europe, to do his utmost for pre- 
venting a law which should give the contributions of 
the people into the hands of trustees, with the usual 
guarantees and responsibilities. 

26 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

We have endeavored in the preceding pages to un- 
mask the real enemies of American prosperity and 
progress. They are numerous, powerful, subtle, un- 
scrupulous and audacious ; and their number is rapidly 
increasing. Their purpose is to change the form of go- 
vernment of this country, its whole civil polity, and its 
religion, to regulate all the industrial pursuits of the 
American people in such a way as to render American 
labor wholly tributary to foreign capitalists, and specu- 
lators ; and to rule the country, bringing it wholly 
(298) 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 299 

under foreign domination, through Jesuit intrigue and 
the bribery of foreign gold. These agents are veterans 
in diplomacy and intrigue. Their secret societies are 
spread all over the land, existing wherever there is a 
Jesuit college or a Roman Catholic Church. Their 
open measures are urged in our legislative halls as the 
result of truly liberal and democratic principles ; and 
up to the present moment their success has been en- 
tirely unchecked. 

Still we believe there is enough of the true Ameri- 
can spirit left in the country to defeat their designs, 
if the Americans will diligently apply themselves to 
learning the real truth and perform the duty which 
that truth dictates. The American people are highly 
talented and intelligent. They are capable of investi- 
gating any point which relates to their political welfare, 
if they choose to, do it. In the old colonial times both 
Burke and Pitt complimented the American colonists 
on their proficiency in law, their sound parliamentary 
eloquence and their political wisdom. It is not possi- 
ble that the descendants of the people compared by 
Chatham with the ancient Greeks and Romans should 
have lost all sense of nationality, all desire to be 
American, 



300 THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA UNMASKED. 

"We hope for better things. Especially as a party 
calling themselves Americans, has recently sprung into 
existence and declared that Amerieans shall rule Ame- 
rica. Last June this party carried the city of Phila- 
delphia by a heavy majority, having the votes of the 
Whig party in their favor. This month (May 1855) 
they have carried the same city against the fusion of 
all the whigs, all the democrats, all the Koman 
Catholics and all the foreign protestants, (this last is 
a very numerous body in Philadelphia.) So far as 
Philadelphia is concerned the march is onward. If we 
recollect rightly the same party carried the state of 
Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, last autumn. It 
occurs to us too, that something of the same sort has 
happened, in those states where a former revolution, 
having American nationality in view, took its rise, the 
states, namely, of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and 
Connecticut. Even New York, the paradise of for- 
eigners, exhibits systems of restiveness under the for- 
eign rule which has so long degraded and disgraced 
her. But as this was the last spot to be given up by 
the British to American rule after the first revolution, 
we shall not be disappointed if it should be their last 
stronghold in the contest which has now begun. Sena- 



« 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 301 

tor Brooks appears to be ripping open certain dark, 
recesses of villany with an unsparing hand. What he 
discloses shows so clearly the extortion and oppression 
to which the Roman Catholic people are subjected, 
that we should not be surprised to see the congrega- 
tions joining the American movement, as some of them 
did in the old Eevolution, and going in for that un- 
heard of thing a republican Catholic Church. Stran- 
ger things have happened. 

We wish it to be clearly understood that the ground 
we occupy is purely politicial. We do not discuss the 
religious dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, or 
interfere with its faith or worship. But we recognize 
in the Roman Catholic Priesthood, and the Jesuit 
Brotherhood, two distinct political organizations^ united 
in purpose and using religion as a mask for political 
purposes, as they always have done in all ages and 
countries. These we must and will oppose. We can- 
not do otherwise. We have not done with them yet. 
What we have said in this little volume, is only a slight 
intimation of what is coming. If life is spared they 
shall hear from us again. 



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